Broken Kalopsía
by BlackAster
Summary: [Set roughly two years after the end of the series, unfinished episodes included] It started with a toxic-waffles-flavoured accident, followed by a radioactive coincidence. Zim is faced with the fact that he isn't what he thought he had always been. Not an Invader, but a Defective, an exile. Can this be a beginning, not a doomed end? (Full sum inside. ZaDF/R, other pairings)
1. Chapter 1

**Full Summary:**  
[Set roughly two years after the end of the cartoon series, unfinished episodes included]  
It all started with a toxic-waffles-flavoured accident, followed by a radioactive coincidence. The exposure to a mysterious space radiation messes up not just Zim's routine on Earth but also his behaviour patterns and leads to an accidentally eavesdropped conversation between the Tallest and the discovery that his mission on Earth is, in truth, nothing but a joke. Zim is faced with the fact that he isn't what he thought he had always been. Not an Invader, not even a member of the Irken society. He's a Defective, an exile, a wild card his people want either dead or far away. His whole existence, a lie. All he has left, a planet he hates, the incredibly deep, absurdly complicated relationship with his nemesis, a game-obsessed scary girl, a robot who's as Defective as he is and a snarky Computer.  
The events, though, aren't done with him. A chance meeting, with one of the Hi Skool counsellors, opens up a whole new range of prospects. Can his status as an exile be a beginning, instead of a doomed end? Even if it means changing most of what he had known and believed in? Can Earth conquest still be available...in another fashion?

 **Pairings:** Mainly ZaDR/F, others to be added

 **Author's (long) notes:**

"Kalopsía": The delusion of things being more beautiful than they are.

Hello! This is my first Invader Zim story. I used to watch the show when I was a kid, but a couple of months ago a friend of mine made me reminisce the good old times when it was being aired and I had to go back and rewatch it. So, here I am, over ten years later after the last time I saw an episode! This said, the story will contain mostly references to the show (some unfinished episodes included), even if I've been reading the comics too, so I might mention some stuff from those as well.

A few things about the plot and the characters.  
Dib is 14-15 in this story, which makes Gaz 13-14.  
I really love Gaz's characters, with her badass, I-don't-give-a-damn attitude. I tried to stick to it, but I also made her more mature and less of a bully, especially when it comes to Dib. They get along a bit better now. She's going to be a (reluctant) supportive character through the story (and most likely the one who'll eventually saves everyone's ass).  
As for Dib, while he's still hellbent on defending Earth and utterly persuaded that Zim is above anything else a menace, he has started to realise that there's more than hate in his relationship with the alien. He's older now, is going through all the changes that becoming an adolescent and so an almost adult means, and during the four years he had been battling the Irken he had come to realise, and especially admit, that Zim is the closest thing he has to a friend. This has changed his view of his rival a bit, and it will develop more as the story goes.  
Now, Zim. He's the character who'll go through the biggest amount of character development, having to deal with the truth about his banishment on Earth and status as a Defective. I liked the idea of him accidentally ending up in "therapy", which was the idea that made me start this story, and gradually starting to see things through a different point of view, becoming more aware of his own unique, independent way to see reality, through different experiences and experimental changes in his interactions with the other characters. I tried to keep him as IC as possible in this viewpoint, I guess you'll let me know what you think. His working around his new reality is the main theme of the first arc of the story.  
Aside from these three (and GIR of course! Oh, and Zim's counsellor), there will be other characters, starting from Red and Purple, then Skoodge, Tenn, Professor Membrane, even Tak (I'm not exactly a fan of hers, but we'll see). The other characters will have a bigger role in the second part of the story, while in the first they are mostly background characters.  
Plotwise, as I mentioned there will be two main parts. The first set on Earth and involving the consequences of Zim's discovery (which means it will be mostly focused on characters and relationships development). The second with more action/adventure parts, actual war/battles, with more characters involved and different settings. I have plans to explore the Irken civilisation a bit more, basing it on my own ideas and some headcanons I've met exploring the fandom.  
As for the pairings/general relationships, the main focus will be on Zim and Dib, starting from their rivalry, landing to a weird friendship and ending up on something that can be defined as romantic (as much as Zim can do romance, at least). I also intend to explore Dib/Gaz sibling bond a bit, Zim/GIR sort of friendship and Zim/Gaz interactions which will go in the direction of a friendly alliance. I intend to bring Skoodge and Tenn back on the picture, and they both will act as friends for Zim along the way. As the tags might suggest, the other important (even if not as much as Zim's & Dib's) friendship/romance will involve Red and Purple (mainly in the second arc of the story).  
I might add other background romantic relationships later on, but it's still to be decided. Suggestions are welcome, about this subject and any other! xD

I apologise for the super long intro, but I wanted to give a full panoramic of this project! I'm open to questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other). Feedback is gold for inspiration!

Enjoy!

 **Disclaimer:** the show and the characters belong to the rightful owners.

* * *

It all started with a sugar and toxins flavoured accident. It was February the 14th again, the date of that crazy, useless, disgusting holiday that some humans were so fond of. Valentine's Day. For the third time since he had landed on Earth, Zim had been forced to spend the holiday trying to avoid the random flying slabs of meat that, somehow, seemed to frequently head in his direction. He strongly suspected that the phenomenon was Dib-related, since no one in the school would ever even think about gifting _him_ one. Not that he would have appreciated such shows of affection. Witnessing them among the other students was already too much to bear.

After how his first Valentine had ended, with Tak's involvement and the mess that had almost made him lose his mission, he hadn't made any further attempt to understand how all that human love thing worked and had been contented to with trying to stay out of the trajectory of the steaks. Those rituals were nonsensical in themselves, and, now that they had started Hi Skool and had been able to witness what was supposed to happen when they succeeded, he had decided that the results were simply revolting in most cases.

So, leaving the building behind at the end of the lessons, with all the smooching humans at every corner, was a relief. Despite the fact that he had found out, a couple of years before, through some thorough testing, that what harmed his kind wasn't Earth water itself but the pollutants in it, the idea of getting too close to any kind of human-related fluids gave him the creeps. He had even walked the whole back to his base just not to have to witness more making out sessions. Mankind was really a dumb, shameless, filthy race. Every day spent on that planet just made the first impression he had had of it stronger and stronger.

"Welcome home, MASTER!" GIR squealed as soon as the Irken had crossed the threshold, his high pitch voice giving the alien an instant headache. The robot twirled on his left foot and then started to jump around the Invader. "I have a present for you! Guess who made waffles?"

Zim made a face, both at the yelling and at the mention of the food. "GIR, we talked about you and cooking, remember? Several times," he scowled, even if he knew that he would have ended up eating whatever his crazy SIR Unit had made for him, out of exasperation. He reached out and took off his wing and contact lenses, stretching his antennae. "Especially about you adding random chemicals to the food."

"But…But…These waffles are _special_!" The robot complained, grabbing his master by the wrist and starting to drag him towards the kitchen. "These are _luuuurve_ waffles! For Lurve Day!"

The scepticism on the alien's face started to turn into horror and he was shaved in one of the chairs. "You made themed sweets for the human pig-love's day?" He asked, incredulous. He should be used to his sidekick's stunts and to his madness, but somehow the other still managed to catch him off guard. " _Why_ on Irk…?!"

He couldn't finish his sentence because a plate was slammed down before his face. On it there was a pile of what he guessed being the "special waffles" GIR had mentioned, but in truth what his eyes met were neon-pink and brown, weirdly shaped _somethings_. Some of them might have looked like hearts, if one wanted to take a wild guess, while others were simply irregular masses of baked dough. On the top of the pile, there was a bigger waffle, shaped neatly, at least compared to the others, as a pig. The sight of the robot's cheerful, large grin as he held out a fork just made the whole scene look even more horrifying.

Zim gulped loudly at the sight, antennae flattening against his scalp. He was afraid to ask what exactly his SIR Unit had put in the sweets, but on one thing he didn't have many doubts. Once he would be done eating, he would be very, _very_ sick. Perhaps so sick that he would have to go down the lab and hook his PAK to the Computer to help it clear the toxins faster.

"Aren't you going to eat my _lurve_ waffles?" The robot whined, looking at the Irken expectantly. His pose suggested that he would start crying and screaming any moment, if his request wasn't complied and fast. "I made them for you! GIR loooves his master!"

The Invade took the fork out of his sidekick's grasp in a hurry, more because he was afraid that the other would stab him with it than because he was in a rush to do as he was being demanded. "Yes, yes, Zim will eat them," he quickly said, using the piece of cutlery to cut off the head of the pig waffle. His squeedly spooch contracted painfully as he brought the piece of waffle near his mouth, but he forced himself to ignore the feeling. He shot the SIR Unit one last glance, noticing that the other's expression had become, if possible, even more eager, and then wrapped his thin lips around the forkful, shoving the food in his mouth and coaxing himself into chewing and swallowing it.

The flavour that hit his taste buds was acrid and bitter, with a sickeningly sweet aftertaste that, unlike the first impact, wasn't _that_ bad. However, it wasn't much of a consolation considering that the way in which his insides grumbled confirmed the scary entity of the sickness that waited ahead of him. Damn robot. Once he would have recovered, assuming that those waffles wouldn't kill him, he would have to make sure to keep the SIR Unit away from the kitchen for at least a month. He had been subjected to enough food poisoning in the last year. He needed a break.

"YAAAAAAY!" GIR exploded as he saw his beloved master starting to eat the snack he had prepared, completely oblivious to the fact that he was harming him. Not even the heavy grimace on the alien's face seemed to give away the truth in his teal eyes. "I'm glad you like them! Eat, eat, eat, eat, _eeeeeeeeat_!"

Zim watched his sidekick whirling around the room, pleading, in the vain attempt of somehow escaping his cruel fate. However, it became quickly clear that the robot had no intention of stopping his movements or meeting his gaze until all the waffles would be eaten, so he resigned himself to look back at the pile of poisonous sweets in front of him. He would eat them, because there was nothing he wouldn't face for the sake of his mission and of the glory of the Irken Empire. Deep down he knew that complying to the whims of a crazy SIR Unit had nothing to do with his task as an Invader, but he refused to acknowledge that truth. He needed something that would keep him eating those sweet horrors and nothing was a strongest incentive as his devotion to his Tallest and what they represented. Even when he was just, consciously, deluding himself.

"Curse you, GIR! _Curse you_!"

His swearing was met only by a cheerful, mad fit of giggling.

 **xxx**

"Master. Master! _Master_! MASTER!"

The single word pounded in Zim's brain, shaking his whole body and bringing back that nasty headache that GIR's voice had given him when he had come home in the afternoon. Or the day before. The Invader wasn't exactly sure of what time it was. He had a vague recollection of getting down to his lab, while throwing up horribly inside a bucket that the robot had pulled out apparently of thin air, and to have somehow managed to order the Computer to link his PAK to the recharging unit. What happened next was a mystery. He clearly hadn't choked himself in his own vomit, but he had no idea if he had just passed out or if he had kept emptying his spooch for some more hours before fainting. He didn't really want to know.

"Master, are you awake?" The annoying voice insisted.

The Invader let out a growl, forcing his eyes open. He was laying on the floor, still connected to the main system of his base, and his uniform was all sticky with what he guessed being the contents of his guts. The bucket, filled with the same brown-greenish substance, was a meter away from him, spreading the nasty, acid smell in the lab air. Irkens, while capable of sleeping, didn't need to, unless they were extremely bored and needed to pass the time, as he had during his trip to Earth, or if they were in very bad conditions and had the chance to run into a safe refuge. In this case, it had obviously been the latter.

He stood up, making a few gagging noises. He was perfectly fine now, aside from the dirty cloth he was wearing, which meant that his PAK had done his job, but he was infinitely pissed off at his SIR Unit. "Why on Irk haven't you cleaned up this mess yet?" He barked at the Computer, pointing the bucket and the pools of vomit around it. "And what do you want?!"

"You didn't ask," the electronic voice asked, the shrug perfectly audible in his tone. Then one of the screens lit up, showing the time. "You're late. Hi Skool will be starting in half an hour."

Zim's eyes went wide. Being late in itself wasn't a problem. He had been often late for lessons, especially when the preparations for his plans occupied his whole night. The problem was that he had been late too often in the last period and the teachers had threatened him to send him to the headmaster's office, if he kept arriving after the start of the lessons. Now, being brought in front of the school principal sounded like a way to get _a lot_ of attention and that was what he had been trying to avoid since he had landed on that ball of dirt almost four years before.

"WHAAA?! Why didn't you wake me up sooner, you stupid bunch of circuits!" He screamed, struggling to get his dirty top off. He managed after a few agitated moments. " _GIR_! You useless robot! Get me some cleansing chalk! I need to wash myself. _Now_!"

"I've been trying for almost twenty minutes, but you wouldn't wake up," the Computer talked back, now sounded almost offended.

"Whatever," the Irken growled, hurrying to get rid of the rest of his clothes just as the SIR Unit stepped inside the lab, carrying the soap and humming under his breath. "Get me a new uniform. And clean up this mess!"

"Good morning, master!" GIR chirped, obviously in high spirits. "You done puking! Good! It was so, so _grooooooss_!"

"I'm so dismantling you later!" The alien yelled, but didn't really bother to even kick his sidekick as he grabbed the soap from his grip. "Be glad that I don't have time, right now!"

The robot giggled happily at the threats, as if they had been the most delightful jokes. Zim wondered why he still bothered to make them at all, seeing how they always fell flat. They helped him venting a bit, but most of the times they were really a pure waste of breath. He could have screamed himself hoarse and GIR almost wouldn't have noticed.

He busied himself washing up and drying, using the small time he needed for cleaning to clear his head too. Now that part of the frenzy was gone, he was starting to notice that he felt light-headed, in a somehow pleasant, dazing way. The sensation confused him, but he quickly discarded it, focusing on trying to go around his business as quickly as possible. He didn't notice when he distractedly offered a heartfelt "thank you", instead of a string of insults, to the Computer when the latter handed him a clean uniform, leaving the machine utterly astonished. Nor he realised that he had hugged the crazy robot back when the other had clung on him, saying his goodbyes, and that, by the time he was on the road, running towards the school building, his anger was gone and he was in a rare, genuine good mood.

 **xxx**

Dib rested his chin on the palm of his hand, looking out of the window. The bell that marked the start of the lessons hadn't rung yet, but he knew that it would in less than a couple of minutes. The teacher had already arrived and all the students were already sat in the classroom, with a single, noticeable, at least in the teen's eyes, exception: Zim was nowhere to be seen. The scythe-haired boy smirked, remembering how shocked the alien had looked when he had been threatened to be sent to the principal's office if he was late again. Perhaps that day he would have the pleasure to see his rival being kicked around by the system.

Looking at her watch, the teacher got up, deciding that she could as well close the door since the bell was about to ring. However, right before the lock could click, a gloved hand stopped it, pushing the wooden surface back open until a gap, large enough to let the Irken sneak in, was created. The woman raised an eyebrow at the newcomer, as if she was considering whether she should let him in or not.

"The bell hasn't rung yet," Zim pointed out, helpfully, giving her a sweet smile that definitely didn't suit him. "Can I take my seat?"

The grin got brighter as soon as the teacher nodded, moving out of his way, and he walked over the only desk that had been left empty, the one right next to Dib's. Usually the two of them sat as far as possible from one another, or rather, the alien made sure to stay away from his rival so that the other couldn't spy on his planning, but that day the Irken found that he didn't mind. He also realised that had no intention of trying to conquer the planet for once. He wasn't in the mood.

"Morning, Dib-thing," he greeted in a tone that, if not coming from him, could have been classified as cheerful. He sat down and pulled out his notebook, ignoring the fact that the teen was staring at him with wide eyes as he had done in a very few occasions.

Dib eyed the alien suspiciously. Zim was acting weird, in a way that was far, far different from his usual oddness. He hadn't come in screaming, hadn't thrown any sort of nasty glance at anyone and hadn't insulted him, outside his usual nicknames. On the contrary, he had been almost… _nice_. Shivers ran down his spine as a very bad feeling spread in his guts. The Irken was planning something huge and nasty for sure. There was no other explanation for his attitude. He narrowed his eyes. Whatever it was, he would find out and stop him before it was too late. After almost four years spent fighting the other, there was no way that he would let himself be misled by his behaviour, no matter how unusual it might be. If Zim thought that he was so dumb that he would fall for him, then he would prove him wrong once again.

As the time passed, though, no outline of some crazy, dumb plan or any other explanation for the Invader's demeanour surfaced. The Irken just spent the first period doodling on his notebook and staring out of the window, and so did in the next two classes they shared. He didn't complain when the human stalked him to his locker, demanding to know what he was planning. Even the answer he got to his inquiries was weird. A shrug and the word "nothing" spoken in the most casual tone ever. There was no sign of the loudness that usually characterised the alien when he was lying. He didn't stammer, let out maniacal laughs, evade his eyes or words. In the end, the teen gave up, still not persuaded that there was nothing going on, but starting to doubt of his certainty too.

They had different lessons during the fourth period, so the next time the scythe-haired boy's eyes landed on Zim was in the cafeteria. Even after all that time, the alien was still stubborn in taking a trail of food, despite the fact that he ate nothing or almost out of it. The cooking was a bit better than it had been in Skool canteen, at least for humans, but apparently almost everything was still incompatible with the Irken physiology. The only things Dib had ever seen the Invader swallowing, aside from the random, failed attempts at eating whatever was put in his plate, were some of the desserts. He had started to wonder if Zim really lived off on GIR's soapy waffles and taquitos or if he had more proper supplies shipped from outer space.

After a few minutes, the Invader seemed to notice his intense stare and looked up from where he had been poking his lunch, lifting a hand to actually _wave_ at him, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. The teen instantly ducked his head, feeling irritated for having been caught red-handed, but also even more weirded out by the gesture. He had to find out what was going on, and soon, or that would be the time when he finally went crazy because of the green idiot.

"Hey, Gaz," he started, turning to look at his sisters who, as per usual, was sitting next to him. He paused for a moment, amazed by how well she managed to multitask, eating her food dutifully without removing her eyes from the videogame she was playing. No matter how many times he saw her, the ability always surprised him. And he had to admit that he was a bit jealous of her hand-eye coordination. "Do you think that Zim is acting weird today?"

The girl didn't even bother to look up. She never did. "Will you ever give up on this obsession of yours?" She asked, even if the question sounded more like a statement. "Nah, on second thoughts, you deserve each other." She then shrugged. "He's the usual dumb head. Even if…" Her voice trailed off and she opened her eyes for a moment, looking pensive. "Now that I think about it. He _greeted_ me this morning, when I ran into him in the corridor. He usually either pretends not to have noticed me or runs away." Her gaze fell on the screen once again. "Perhaps there's something different. Not that I care anyway."

Dib rolled his eyes at his sister's first statements, but he decided not to comment on them, focusing instead on what she had said next. So, the Irken's attitude wasn't just an act that the other had put on around him. The fact left him both contemplative and confused. Could it be the effect of some weird experiment that the alien had been conducting and that had turned on him? Knowing the Invader, it was more than possible. Perhaps he should let it slide, for the moment, and just keep an eye on him as per usual, to see if the behaviour pattern persisted.

From his spot at the empty table, Zim frowned slightly at Dib's reaction to his waving. He was used to the human reacting badly to him, but that day he hadn't done anything to bother him, or anyone else for the matter, yet, so he didn't understand why the teen looked so upset with him. He poked the peas in his plate, knotting his brows together, struck by a sudden thought. Why hadn't he at least tried to make a bit of mischief? Not cooking up a new plan to take over Earth was one thing, he had days when his cruel creativity was on strike, but even in those moments he usually still found ways to torment the inhabitants of the so much hated planet. That day, however, the prospect too seemed unappealing. He was more or less content with going around with his school day, even if he still had the feeling that he was missing something. That he should be _doing_ something, but, whatever it was, it was none of his usual activities.

His frown deepened as he stood up, collecting his trail and going to dump the contents in the nearest trash bin. He still felt that lightness that had fallen upon him when he had fully waken up that morning. The sensation wasn't disturbing him, or at least it wouldn't be if he hadn't kept constantly focusing on it. Still, despite the confusion it brought to him, his mood had stayed good. Nothing had been able to really ruin it. Not his abrupt awakening, not the boredom of the lessons, not Dib. He had even paid a bit of attention during classes and, for once, he had ignored the taunts that the bullies had thrown him across the corridor, when he would have usually at least yelled back at them. He had remained undisturbed, with that light spring in his step that had appeared while he had hurried to Hi Skool that morning and had stayed.

He rested a hand over his abdomen, thoughtful. Perhaps GIR's "lurve waffles" had messed up with the chemistry of his body and that was why he was feeling so weird. Once back at the base, he would have to run a thorough check up on himself, to make sure that there weren't any ill effects left. Normally, the thought that the robot might have messed up his amazing Irken physiology would have enraged him, because he was an Invader and he couldn't afford showing any weakness, but all he felt was a mild irritation that was gone almost immediately, even if he grimaced a bit at the memory of waking up covered in his own vomit. Weird.

Balling slightly his fists along his sides, he headed out of the cafeteria, stalking along the corridors without a real destination. Most of the students were eating their lunch, either in the dining hall or in the empty classrooms, so the dirty corridors were mostly deserted. Better that way. He didn't enjoy moving among the shapeless mass of humans that usually filled them during the "rush hours" in-between classes. The smells and the constant contact disturbed him. His people weren't so unorganised when they moved. Even in the thickest crowds, every Irken was able to follow his path without bumping into another. Unless they were in the middle of some messy battle or running for their lives.

He tilted his head. Thinking about his race had reminded him that the day before he hadn't called the Tallest as he had planned to do. He had been too busy firstly swallowing GIR's hideous waffles and then removing said food from his spooch. He didn't have news for them, unless he decided to tell them the tale of his epic night of puking, the one he didn't remember, but it had been over a week since his last contact. He could at least call in and say hi, see if they had missed him. He might as well ask for news, instead of giving them, for once. He hadn't heard about any of the other Invaders in quite a long time, over two years, and he was curious to know how they were faring. Skoodge and Tenn, in particular. To his people, concepts like "friendship" and "companionship" weren't familiar, even if they knew the meaning of the words, in theory. However, he and Skoodge had trained together and he had shared the battlefield with Tenn a few times. Not to mention that the first seemed almost fond of him, despite everything he had put him through.

The thought of his two counterparts lingered in his mind, making him aware of how weird it was that he was showing even just the slightest interest in anything that wasn't himself or his mission. Another element to add to the list of the oddness of that day. Perhaps he would ask the computer to run a check-up on his PAK too, together with checking his biochemistry. Just to be sure that there wasn't some weird fault in his thinking process. Not that it could be possible. He was Zim and nothing in him was less than perfect and amazing. But just to be sure.

His attention was distracted by those thoughts as his fake violet irises fell on a bunch of fliers left over a desk, near the entrance of one of the study rooms. Curious, he lifted it up, taking a moment to study it and read what it said. His expression lit up suddenly, as a grin, not unlike the one that had grazed his face that morning, when he had managed to get in class in time, opened on his face. No matter how weird it could be, but that piece of paper carried the answer to the feeling of something amiss he had been carrying around for most of the morning. Shooting a quick look around, he folded the flyer and stuffed it in his PAK, before resuming his walk, chin held higher than the usual, as he looked clearly delighted with his discovery.

Unknowingly to him, a pair of amber glass-covered eyes followed each of his movements from behind line of lockers, narrowing when they saw him taking the flyer. Dib waited for the alien to have turned a corner before dashing towards the desk. He had been right after all. Zim was indeed up to something and the answer had to be in those pieces of paper. Looking almost triumphant, he lifted one of them, eagerness shining in his eyes as he greedily read the printed words. His expression, however, fell almost instantly as he realised what he was looking at. _New Friendship Day_. Apparently the student council had decided to add, right after Valentine's Day and Singles Day, a day to celebrate friendship, instead of love or lack of the latter. The flyer explained that technically the real Friendship Day was on July 30th, but it had seemed more proper celebrating it on February 16th and it invited all the students to make cards or bring small presents for their school best pals.

The teen frowned, feeling even more confused than he had been before his new discovery. What could Zim be planning, involving that stupid, made-up celebration?


	2. Chapter 2

Hello there!

As first thing, I wanted to thank whoever has taken the time to read the story. I really appreciated it!

So, here goes the second chapter. Zim's behaviour is totally weird, I know, but as it's been implied in the previous chapter (and as will be stated openly in this one), there a reason why he...well, isn't really himself. It will be solved, though, I promise!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encourage. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

* * *

Zim stuck out his tongue slightly, an expression of total concentration on his face as his hands carefully and slowly handled the hot glue pistole. Outside the night was starting to fall, but he was completely unconcerned with the passing time. He had been stuck in his lab since when he had got back from his afternoon lessons, forgoing the snack that GIR had prepared for him, with the excuse that he had a lot to prepare for the next day. Thankfully, the robot hadn't insisted, most likely still grossed out by the memory of his master endlessly puking the night before. He had stayed upstairs in the living room, watching his stupid Monkeys show, and allowing the Invader to work in peace for once.

The alien put his tools down, raising his working goggles to his forehead and nodding down with satisfaction at his creation. Making it by using his advanced technology would have taken a few minutes instead of over an hour and a half, but doing so would have ruined the purpose of the whole thing. He tilted his head, antennae twitching as he studied the object. It was perfect. Not that it could be anything but, considering that _he_ , the Mighty Zim, had made it.

"Your transmission has been accepted," the Computer announced in that moment, disrupting his focus. "After I have tried to send it through for seventy-three minutes. Don't you think that this should tell you something, _master_?"

The Invader waved a hand, not bothered at all by the hint of sarcasm in the machine's voice as it spoke the title. He had told it to call his leaders not much after having started to work and, when the Computer had told him that his call wasn't being picked up, he had just ordered it to keep trying. "My Tallest are obviously busy leading the Empire," he stated nonchalantly and without any doubt, putting his creation in a cardboard box and closing it. "They most likely haven't realised that it was me calling. They would have picked up sooner, if they had known. Put it through."

"If you say so…" The Computer mumbled. The tone it used clearly told that it thought that what had left his master's mouth was utter bullshit, but it still did as commanded, once again surprised by the lack of yelling or insults in answer to its words and implication. The Irken was surely in a weird, pleasant, forgiving mood that day. He had to be mortally ill. Or he had gone mad at last. There was no other explanation.

The screen lit up and the tall, angular figures of the leaders of the Empire appeared on it, looking anything but pleased. Purple was munching on a donut, a deep scowl on his face. However, the general effect of his expression was a bit ruined by the way in which he was cuddling the bag of snacks against his chest. Red, instead, simply stood in front of the screen, arms crossed over his chest and dripping aggravation.

"Zim, it's _you_. You kept on calling for almost an hour and a half. Even if we weren't picking up," the latter started to say, exasperation filling his voice. "Just… _Why_? The thought that we might not want to talk to you hasn't even crossed…"

He didn't finish the sentence, realising that something was off about the picture that the screen of the Massive was projecting. Usually, the Invader stood at attention in front of them, bouncing with excitement or eagerness to tell them about his latest, futile plan and gloat, but in that moment he wasn't even looking up. He appeared to be scribbling something in the Earthen language on a piece of paper, as if he hadn't heard a word of what he had been said. Odd.

"Zim?" Red called out again, half way between annoyed and concerned. He might detest the little pest, but every time the shorter Irken had broken his usual behaviour patterns a disaster had happened. That considered, he had enough reasons to be concerned, even if the other was so many light years away from them. After all, he was responsible for the death of not one, but _two_ of their predecessors. "Are you in there?"

The Invader's head shot up and he instantly straightened his back too, realising that he had been ignoring his leaders almost completely. "Oh, yes, yes, of course, my Tallest! I apologise!" He quickly exclaimed, bowing a few times and looking sincerely concrete. "I was just…uh…making the last adjustment to my… _amazing_ plan to conquer the Earth!" He offered a shaking grin, grabbing the piece of paper and quickly hiding it behind his body.

"And what this plan would be about, uh?" Purple inquired, antennae raising slightly. When they had finally, begrudgingly decided to accept the transmission, he had had all the intentions to stay out of the conversation and leave the burden of dealing with that bothersome tiny being to his co-ruler, but Zim's weird behaviour had captured his interest.

"Uh…It's…Well…" The shorter Irken stuttered, unable to come up with a believable lie. "It's still unfinished!" He claimed after a few seconds, raising his voice to the point that he was almost yelling. "I'll let you know as soon as I'll be done." He scratched the back of his head slightly before going on. "Actually, I don't have any news for you. Uh, not really."

"Then _why_ are you calling us?" Red demanded, annoyance starting to take up the space that had been occupied by his budging worry until a moment before.

Zim's antennae flattened against his skull. "To say hi? I…I missed you," He offered, almost hopefully. Perhaps that call hadn't been a good idea. His leaders had had to be in the middle of something very important, something that they had interrupted _especially_ to talk to him. That had to be the reason why they were getting so aggravated now. Perhaps he should have waited until the next day, before trying to contact them again, after his first request for a transmission had been denied.

Purple turned to look at his co-ruler, eyes wide, the half-eaten donut temporarily forgotten. He was too astonished even to be annoyed. That particular Irken was a menace and he was pretty random at times, everyone knew it. However, what they were seeing and hearing now was too out of place, ever for Zim. Not to mention that there was nothing remotely funny in that call, which was the only reason why he usually put up with having to spoke with the Defective. "He's joking, right?" He questioned, still staring at Red, almost hoping that the other had seen some sort of elaborate joke that he was missing in all that farce.

"I'm afraid that he is _not_ ," the other Tallest mumbled, glaring daggers at the Invader, who was still grinning nervously at them. While being as caught off guard as his companion was, he had no problems with getting angry at the same time. "Zim…"

"I had a question, actually," Zim stepped in, interrupting his leader yet again, but that, at least, was normal for him. He didn't wait for the permission to go on, he simply kept the words flooding. "Do you have any news from Invaders Tenn and Skoodge? I mean, I heard that Tenn had had some troubles with this squad of malfunctioning SIR Units like two years ago, but that she managed anyway. And Skoodge, I haven't seen or heard from him since Hobo 13 and I was wondering what he could be up too now. After all, he conquered Blotch and that's a huge achievement…for someone like him. And, uh, yeah. It's a stupid question, because of course you know about every Invader, but I was wondering if you could share with me and…"

" _Zim_!" Red cut him off loudly, before the shorter Irken's already too fast words could turn into an unintelligible mass of sounds. "Let me get this straight," he resumed, in a less loud but still stern voice, once he had made sure that his speaker had truly shut up. "You called us not because you have relevant information about something even just slightly important, but because you… _missed_ us and because you wanted to know how Tenn and Skoodge are doing?"

The Invader nodded slightly, the hesitation returning now that he had been forcefully stripped of his nervous hurry. Summed up like that, the whole ordeal sounded even more stupid. "Yes, my Tallest." There was no sense in denying it. And, now that he thought more about it, there was no sense in his decision to call and ask those things either. What had got into him? The same thing that had had him acting harmlessly and oddly all day, of course. But, as for the question of what this "thing" was, it was still unanswered.

Red and Purple shared another look, before the second started to talk. "We'll do you a favour for once, Zim. Now we'll end this call and we'll forget that it ever happened. And you won't call us again unless you have an actual, objective good reason to do so. How does that sound?"

"It…As wise as always, my Tallest," Zim stuttered, nodding in a rush. He wasn't very happy with the solution his leaders had offered him, since he hadn't even got the information he had asked for, but he knew better than contradicting the clear command hidden behind the polite suggestion. "This conversation never happened. And it will never happen again."

"Good," was Red's curt comment and the transmission was cut off immediately after without further hesitation.

The Irken finally relaxed, feeling all the tension and the fear that had filled him as the weird discussion went on leaving his body. Dumb. That all had been so utterly _dumb_. He really needed to give himself a check-up. His eyes fell on the paper he was still holding, now creased since he had been squeezing it in his fist without realising. He put it down on the console and tried to fix it by pressing it flat down against the metal and smoothing it with the palm of his hands. Damn, nothing was going as he had planned.

"Computer, please, run a diagnostic on my PAK and test my biochemistry," he ordered, trying to sound as determined as he could be and to ignore the second word that had slipped from his lips. He then picked up the box and rested the card over it, starting to carry both towards the elevator. Perhaps it was the right moment to watch a movie with GIR. He had promised the robot that they would over two weeks before. He would grab some Irken soda and see if the snack his SIR Unit had prepared that day was at least edible. "I'll be upstairs."

The door of the lift closed before the Computer could speak, leaving the machine buzzing uncertain for a moment. "And how am I supposed to carry out those check-ups without access to the test subject?" It finally asked itself, wishing it had eyes so that it could roll them. Then, after a moment of silence, it added, sounding uncertain: "Did he seriously said "please" to me?"

 _On the Massive…_

Purple kept staring at the screen even after the communication had been cut off on his order, still trying to understand if the whole conversation had happened or if he had just hallucinated. Red's expression, when he turned to check it, was enough to push any doubts about a delusional sugar high away from his mind.

"Do you think that he finally snapped and went completely mad?" He asked after a few more moment of perplexed silence. "I knew that it was coming, but this isn't what I've expected. I've pictured more of another destruction spree."

"I have no idea," Red shrugged. He was still irritated by the incredibly awkward waste of time he had just endured, but he had decided that, deep down, he wouldn't care, while Zim and his sudden madness remained confined to Earth and away from them. "Perhaps it's just something he had been exposed to on that weird planet. Or maybe you're right and he finally lost it. Either way, it's the humans' problems, definitely not ours. It could be the right time to get definitely rid of him. Tell him the truth about his condition, in a way that not even a self-centred moron like him can deny, and make him realise that he's marooned on that planet he hates so much till the day he'll finally do the universe a favour and perish."

Purple nodded, speculatively. "Yeah. Playing him around has been fun at first, but I'm getting tired of it. Besides, the more we keep him around, the more dangerous he becomes," he agreed, turning his attention back towards his donuts. "He's a Defective. We can't find a way to kill him or make him work as a service drone, so exile is our last resort. He'd get rid of himself in time."

His co-ruler let out a sound of assent and reached out to steal one of his snacks as they both turned to look out at the huge window of the Control Room. Now that they had decided how to deal with the Zim issue, they could go back focusing on their real, important tasks. There were a few planets waiting for the Armada and its destructive power, and then they would have to decide what to do with their most recent conquests. Then, perhaps, they could have taken a break from the hordes of small, green beings who were constantly buzzing around them, asking useless questions, greedy for any kind of orders and recognition. And the speeches. They had enough of those since the very start. Operation Impending Doom II had so far been a success, with the Irken Defective far, far away, so they deserved a vacation.

╔ IZ ╗

Dib drummed his fingers on his desk, looking out of the window as he had done the day before, but this time there was a deep frown on his face. He had spent the whole afternoon, after school, spying on the alien's base, trying to grasp the slightly clue of what he was planning, but without success. That morning he had even checked every damn present that had been exchanged for the "New Friendship Day", but that had been a dead end too. The only result he had obtained from such a course of actions had been being called a freak and being glared at. Nothing he wasn't used to, but it was still frustrating. Had he been wrong about his rival? Could it be true that the other, for once, wasn't actually planning anything? But, if that was true, how to explain his behaviour and the stealthy way in which he had snatched the flyer the day before?

The teen let his head fall on the surface if his desk. Questions, questions and only questions. No answer in sight. He closed his eyes and stifled a sigh. Perhaps he was really seeing threats at every turn, even when they weren't there. Maybe the Irken's paranoia had finally managed to infect him. Perhaps it was time that he started to listen to his father and focused on something more… _real_. He wasn't starting to think that the paranormal was just a bunch of fables, of course, but Gaz was right. He was obsessed, had been since day one, and it had just got worse with the passing time. He needed to regain a bit of detachment or he would seriously go insane.

The sound of a small fit of cough interrupted his thoughts and made his head shot up again to face the newcomer. His amber eyes widened as he found the object of his tormented thoughts staring down at him, disguise perfectly in place, hands behind his back and a very disquietingly sweet smile on his face. Dib gulped, feeling suddenly nervous, gaze darting to the spot where the Invader's arms disappeared behind his thin body, almost expecting to see a horrible torture instrument to appear any moment.

"Z-Zim…?" He stuttered out, feeling both anxious and irritated for his inability to provide a proper verbal attack. He licked his lips and straightened, trying to hide his nervousness, in vain. The foreign smile on the other's face was worse than any other creepy smirk he had come to be more or less familiar with. "What do you want?"

"Good morning, Dib-human," Zim greeted in the same disturbingly cheerful tone he had used the day before. He leant a bit forward, ignoring the hostility in the teen's voice and also how the latter leant back to keep the distance between them. "Zim's got something for you!"

By the time morning had come, the Irken had found himself in an even weirder, even better mood than he had been the day before. He and GIR had spent half of the night watching movies on the huge screen of their living room, ingesting the robot's latest creation, which, incredibly, had been almost good and especially _not_ harmful. The appearances hadn't been promising, since it had been a shapeless, purple mass, but for once the death threats it seemed to be promising hadn't actually followed. The other half of the time had involved them chasing each other around the base, to the Computer's exasperation, even if somehow they had managed not to destroy anything. Not irreparably at least. The alien couldn't remember the last time he had had so much _fun_ with something that didn't involve destruction, death, blood or torture. It was just another odd sign, but his enthusiasm-dazed brain had refused to register the fact.

He had walked to school that morning too, without the hurry of the previous time, though, and for once the obnoxious landscape around him hadn't looked so unbearable and despicable. He had carried the box with the object he had made in his hands, the one that now was hiding behind his back, more than confident that the gift he had manufactured would have made an impression.

In front of him, Dib was getting more and more alarmed. He had been so preoccupied about the alien coming up with a plan to destroy the planet that the thought that the other's real target could have been him hadn't even crossed his mind. A mistake that could have turned out to be fatal, depending on what exactly was the "something" the Invader had got him. Shaking his head, he forced a stern expression on his face. He wasn't going to let his rival scare him, no matter what gruesome surprise he had in store for him.

"I don't want it," he stated firmly, conjuring up all the determination he was capable of. "I don't even want to see what it is. It's going to be terrible for me, and surely painful, so I have no intention of dealing with it. And I won't allow you to force me to."

The Irken rolled his eyes. "And then you call Zim paranoid," he commented with a scoffed, but the smile came back almost instantly as he removed the box from behind his back and presented it to the human, not caring about what he had just stated. "Here!" He set it down on the desk, in front of the teen. "And don't shake it as you filthy pigs do every time you try to figure out what's inside something. You'll risk breaking it."

Dib moved his chair back instantly, till he hit the border of the desk behind him, not wanting to be too close to whatever was hiding in the harmless-looking container. He couldn't hear any weird sound coming from it, not even the buzz of some electrical device, but it didn't mean that it wasn't dangerous. Who knew what incredible, deadly thing the Invader could have pulled out of his vast technological arsenal or down on Earth from deep space.

A hint of aggravation started to make his appearance through Zim's cheerful demeanour. "Dib-thing, it's not going to explode. Or bite you. Or poison you. Or murder you in your sleep. Or suck you brain out through your orbits. Or carve its place inside your chest and eat you alive," he stated flatly, as if he was trying to reassure the other with a list of nasty things that his creation wouldn't do. "Just open the box."

Dib shot the alien a glare. "What about hypnotising me to force me to commit suicide? Or giving me some horrible, chronic disease that would eventually kill me very slowly and painfully?" He demanded in a defiant tone, even if a shiver ran down his spine as he considered all the other unsaid possibilities. "Or anything else you haven't named?!"

The Irken brought his hands to his wig, in a gesture of incredulous rage, which in the human's eyes was perhaps the first, really familiar and normal, for him, reaction he had had in the last twenty-four hours. "Zim demands that you open the box!" He ordered, peremptorily, resting the urge to grab his antennae in frustration. His grin had turned into a snarl that was anything but soft and friendly. Why did that idiot have to make everything so hard? From his plans to destroy the planet to accepting a simple request. "Do it, worm child, or I'll make sure that you'll suffer through all those things I promised Zim's present won't do!"

The teen hesitated for a moment, but in the end he lifted his hands in surrender, more because he wanted to avoid making a scene that would most likely bring them both troubles than because he had changed his mind about the mysterious contents of the box. "Hey, alright, alright. Calm down, space boy," he said, in a way that was half freaked out and half soothing. "No need to go all crazy now. I'll open it." He eyed the object carefully. "Present, uh…?" He didn't know what to think about the label that the box had been given.

Seeing that the alien's fury seemed to deflate at his words, he swallowed slightly and moved a bit closed to his desk. There was a poorly wrapped ribbon around the container and, stuck under it, a creased note he hadn't noticed till that moment. He put the piece of paper down next to the "present" and then cautiously undid the ribbon, trying to ignore the expectant gaze fixed on him. His hands were itching to shake the box, to get an idea of its content, but he had the feeling that Zim would get extremely pissed once again if he had, considering how sternly he had told him not to, and he didn't want to end up impaled on the alien's sharp PAK legs.

The ribbon came off without activating any nasty mechanism and so did the lid. The human hesitated for a moment before lifting himself and slowly peeking inside, almost afraid that whatever was inside the box could jump on his face if he got too close. It didn't. Instead, his amber eyes widened once again as a new rush of surprise, this time devoid of dread, washed over him. Inside the box sat what looked like a scale model of what he guessed being a spaceship. The paint was slightly smeared and the thing wasn't exactly perfectly shaped, but he recognised the Irken emblem on its front and he had to admit that the vehicle was slightly intimidating, even if it was small enough to stay in his palm and if the model wasn't the best piece of craftsmanship.

"It's a Shuvver, one of the magnificent example of Irken starship technology," Zim's voice cut in, as to answer the question that had just started to form in his mind. "Of course, the real ones are much, much bigger than that model, but that's what they look like. You like space and ships and stuff, so here you go."

Dib reached out to pick up the object, carefully taking it out of the box. It was heavier than it looked, but still not so much. He turned it in his hands for a few moments, before glancing up at his rival, confusion and suspicion crowding his gaze. The model seemed to be harmless and he hadn't been able to spot any mechanism or weapon. It seemed to be exactly what it looked. A harmless toy.

"You made this?" He asked, even if the model's looks were a good enough reply to his question. It was obvious that it was _hand_ -made. Still, he couldn't fathom why the other would put so much effort in such a thing. For him. The Invader never did anything without a reason and, especially, never did anything… _nice_. "Why?"

The Irken reached out past the human and picked up the note, sticking it in his rival face. "They taught you to read in this inferior training area. So, do read, Dib-pig," he stated with a huff of breath and then walked away without waiting for an answer.

The teen glared at him, but only half-heartedly. He was still too perplexed by the gift, because apparently that was exactly what the box contents were, to get mad or even just to convey the special kind of despise he reserved for the alien. Rolling his eyes, he picked up the note and open it. It was a blank piece of paper, with no decoration or anything else aside from a few scribbled words. If Dib's eyes had grown huge at the sight of the scale model, now they almost popped out of his orbits for the astonishment. The note recited: " _Happy Friendship Day, Earth monkey. You will come to Zim's house at half past five p.m. after school because your future master demands it. ZiM_."

The scythe-haired boy looked up from the note, a horrified expression on his face, wide open eyes finding the familiar figure of the alien where he had taken a seat at his usual spot on the other side of the classroom. If the model had made him question the Zim's real intentions, that note had chased away any doubt that had come to his mind. He no longer felt confused about the issue. His rival's plan was now crystal clear: the other was plotting his ultimate demise. All those strange behaviours, the apparent lack of hostility, the _friendliness_ , down to the gift. It was all a scheme to make him lower his guard so that the Invader could strike while he stumbled in confusion.

Dib clenched his fists, crashing the note, a determined scowl replacing the shock expression on his face. He wouldn't let it happen. Now that he had figured out the Irken's ploy he would make sure that it would fail. He wouldn't turn his back to the other, wouldn't lower his defences, not even for a moment. No matter how odd his nemesis's behaviours could get. Two could play that game.

Oblivious to the flaring gaze he was being addressed, Zim was grinning maniacally, congratulating himself for the result he had obtained with his little present. The human had clearly been _awed_ by his hand skills and took off guard once again. Just pleasantly this time. No matter what he chose to do, whether it was destruction or creation, he was a proud soldier of Irk and he always found a way to achieve his goals. Well, more or less. In this case, however, everything was going exactly how he had planned. The Dib would come to his base at the appointed time and he would be able to set in motion the second part of his plan for the day. Nothing would go wrong, not this time.

He rested his chin on his gloved hand. Perhaps he should really start seriously wondering what kind of sickness he had caught and put more efforts in figuring it out. No Irken should literally or metaphorically wake up in the morning and feel the need to be _nice_. The fact that he had was the sign that something was horribly wrong. He had just one afternoon lesson that day, which gave him enough time to go back to his base and run the tests his Computer hadn't the previous night, before he started the preparations for the teen's arrival. Hopefully, he would find what was messing with him and end its influence on him before it caused too many troubles. In the meantime, though, he would strive to follow his amazing schemes to perfection, which meant that he would be the _nicest_ Invader that the universe had ever seen.


	3. Chapter 3

Hello again!

So, third chapter. Once again I want to thank the people who have read this crazy project of mine. I appreciated it.

Aside from that, we're still swimming in odd behaviours here and I really hope that no one is getting too freaked or weirded out (aside from Dib, of course). Also, I do love the idea of having Zim watching human movies on alien. I was ecstatic when I saw the reference to the "War of the Worlds" in the ep "Germs" and I decided that I needed him to see more of those movies. So, please, bear with me and let me indulge myself. I started with what's considered a "classic", even if it's hardly one of my faves, but it sounded just right, since it's a bit of a horror movie too!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encourage. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

Enjoy!

* * *

When the fateful hour came, it found Dib standing on the pavement in front of the entrance of his nemesis's garden. The alien had to know that he was there, since one of the garden gnomes was staring right at him. Those fake, white eyes still creeped him out, even after all those years, and not just because he knew that they could have shot lethal lasers at him, if ordered to. Everything in the small garden was so wrong and at the same time so stereotyped that the overall effect came out as deeply disquieting.

Taking a deep breath, the teen walked the small path that led to the front door, rolling his eyes just slightly at the men bathroom logo stuck on it. He was sure that by now Zim knew that it wasn't supposed to be there. The Invader had been living among humans for long enough. After all that time, even a distracted moron like his rival would have noticed, but apparently the other didn't care enough to take it off.

He shook his head, biting back a sigh. That was the last thing he needed to worry about in that moment. He should focus on being ready for whatever was waiting inside those weird walls. He had spent the whole school day scheming escape plans and trying to imagine what the Irken might have in store for him. While the firsts had been quite a success, since he knew the base well enough after years of spying and infiltrations, with the second thing he hadn't had such luck. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't pinpoint what, among the endless, awful ideas that the alien's mind could come up with, could be the fate his nemesis would try to push upon him that time.

He raised his hand to knock, not wanting to waste more time and to risk chickening out, even if he would never admit that he was feeling the deepest temptation to just turn on his heels and _run_ for his life. However, before he could touch the door, the latter flew open, revealing an overenthusiastic, undisguised GIR.

"Big-Head Boy is HEEEERE!" The robot squealed and grabbed the human's wrist, pulling him inside before the latter could do or say anything, slamming the door shut behind the two of them.

Dib found himself thrown across the room by the overzealous SIR Unit, who had most likely intended to just push him in the living room, and he didn't hit on the floor only because a firm hand grabbed his arm before he could stumble on his feet and lose his balance.

"Here you are, Dib-beast!" Zim exclaimed, claws slightly digging into the teen's flesh where he was gripping at his bicep. He wasn't wearing his disguise, but there was a suspicious, dark and sticky-looking stain on the bottom of his uniform. A hint of annoyance coloured his voice. "You're late. I was starting to think that you weren't coming."

"I…" The human tried to say, but he couldn't speak because he was rudely shoved on the couch by the alien, who instead headed for the giant TV screen. Only in that moment he noticed that his rival was holding something in the hand he hadn't used to catch him. A disk of some sort, which looked awfully like a DVD. The guess was confirmed when the Invader pushed it inside the DVD player and grabbed the remote control before heading back to take the other side of the sofa.

Dib frowned, feeling both dubious and confused for the umpteenth time. What could the Irken be trying to do? Force him to watch some horrible, scary video to torture him psychologically? If it had been anyone else, he would have found the idea lame, but with Zim you could never know. The alien's plans of conquest might be a useless disaster most of the times, but if there was something his nemesis was good at was being cruel. Or, perhaps, all this still part of the other's attempt to unsettle him in order to break past his defences?

"What…" He started again, deciding that he could at least try to confront the Invader about his real intentions, hoping that he would manage to make him start rambling about his "amazing plan" as he did at times, but he was interrupted before he could begin by a screaming GIR, who erupted from the kitchen, carrying a plate.

"The master and I made yummy waffles!" The robot announced, stopping abruptly right in front of the teen, miraculously not dumping the unstable, high pile of sweets he was carrying on the couch pillows. He pointed the brown liquid that was abundantly purred more or less all over the messy stack. "With chocolate sauce!"

The human looked at the food, sceptically. So the stain on the Invader's uniform was chocolate and not some toxic alien substance, or at least that was what the facts seemed to suggest. Still, he knew that those waffles could be just as poisonous as any other venom.

"GIR, remembered what we talked about while we made these?" Zim stepped in, reaching out to grab one of the fork the SIR Unit was carrying. He had been there the whole time, while the sweets were being made, but he knew that the crazy thing couldn't be trusted, even when he was keeping an eye on him. His sidekick nodded eagerly. "So, no soap." A shaken head. "No other chemical, of any sort." The metal skull was shaken again. "And no ink in the sauce." Third shake. "Good." He nodded satisfied. "Computer, analyse the snacks."

A metal arm emerged out of nowhere, making Dib jump slightly, and grabbed a crumb from the topping waffle and then disappeared again. A few moments later the Computer's voice echoed in the room. "The sample seems to indicate that the food is not toxic. It's a _miracle_."

"There's only one thing left to do then," the Irken stated, ignoring the machine's sarcastic comment, and cut off a piece of waffle with his fork, studying it almost suspiciously before stuffing it in his mouth and chewing. His antennae perked up in satisfaction. The consistency was a bit too soft, but the flavour was a thousand times better than the one of the snacks the robot had made him on Valentine's Day. There was no trace of the toxic taste and his spooch didn't react when the piece of sugary material slid down his throat. That was more than enough to say that they were safe to eat without consequences.

He took the plate from GIR and set it on the couch between him and the human. "Try them. They're…not bad, for being filthy human food," he declared, stabbing a bigger piece. "Of course, it's nothing compared to the _superiority_ of Irken snacks, but they'll do. From my observations of Earthen costumes, I have deduced that humans like to consume nourishment while they watch movies, especially if they have company. So Zim made you food."

Dib hadn't moved an inch since having been interrupted, if one didn't count him being startled by the Computer, and had stared at the whole scene with wide eyes, not knowing if he should laugh hysterically, say "thank you" for the precautions that had being taken for his sake or run away screaming. If he had thought that the alien's behaviour at school had been weird, now he found himself forced to change his mind. The polite greetings and the lack of enmity were nothing compared to the sight of the Invader trying to be the perfect host, in his own, perverse way. It was all surreal.

"Uh, Zim, why did you…?" He questioned, letting his voice trail off and gesturing towards the waffles, since he wasn't sure on how he should finish to formulate his inquiry.

The Irken rolled his eyes. "I've just explained it to you, worm child," he shot back, a hint of irritation colouring his tone. "Don't you know the costumes of your own race?"

The teen fought back the impulse to facepalm. The other could be incredibly dense at times and he was honestly starting to wonder if he did it on purpose just to get on people's nerves. He was well aware of how naïve the alien could be regarding certain topics and he knew that most times Zim was just either ignorant or simply dumb. However, on rival other hand, there were occasions, like the current one, in which he had the impression that his nemesis acted on purpose to appear more stupid than he really was.

"I'm not asking you why you made me waffles. Well, yes, but not in the way you mean it," he tried to explain, rubbing the back of his neck. He didn't know if he should feel suspicious or simply uneasy. "I want to know why you're doing all this. The gift, the note, the whole "movie and food" stuff. What are you aiming for? What is it that you're doing here?"

The Irken stared at the human for a long moment. He could tell that his nemesis was confused and that he didn't like not being able to tell what was going on. It didn't take a genius to know that Dib was surely trying to figure out how his odd behaviour could fit into a bigger plan for Earth destruction and the fact that he couldn't had to be driving him crazy. The awareness amused Zim, because, impulse to act nice or not, he would never stop finding pleasure in messing with the scythe-haired boy's head. For once, though, that wasn't why he was so unwilling to offer an explanation. There was no way that he would admit that he was doing all this just because he felt like doing it, that there was no bigger scheme to watching a movie and sharing food in peace. Besides, he was sure that the human wouldn't have believed him in any case if he had told him that he was doing it just because he wanted to be nice to the only being he shared some sort of relationship with on that ball of dirt. The fact that said being happened to be his enemy didn't matter. Or rather, it gave the whole thing a deeper meaning, at least from an Irken prospect.

"I think the term to describe what we're doing in your inferior language is "hanging out"," he answered, sidestepping the question with a shrug and trying to sound as casual as possible. He hit a button on the remote control, starting the DVD, and took another piece of sweet. "Now be quiet and stop trying to spoil my work. Not that you could, even if you wanted. Just eat your waffles and watch the movie, Earth monkey."

Dib thought of pressing the issue, but the Invader's magenta eyes had already left him and had fixed on the screen, with a stubbornness in his gaze that clearly stated that for him the conversation was over. Insisting would have just either met a wall of thick silence or given the alien the pretext to start one of his annoying, pointless, unrelated, angry tirades and he wasn't in the mood to listen to them. He was already too much on the edge to put up with that kind of stunts. So, he resigned himself to do as he had been told, turning his gaze on the screen and picking up a piece of the too soft waffles. He would still try to keep an eye on his rival, just in case he tried something.

The movie turned out to be the first "Alien" and, while watching it, the teen realised two things. The first one was that the sweets the Irken and his crazy sidekick had prepared were actually edible and even tasted good, although they were hardly the best he had eaten in his life. The second realisation, which came to him more slowly, was even more shocking. He had expected the Invader to be waiting for him to get distracted, so that he could attack, but instead he noticed that it was _Zim_ who had let his guard down.

Dib found himself analysing the situation, as the images passed by on the TV. The alien had let him inside his base willingly, without even scanning him for cameras or spying devices, and was sitting next to him without his disguise, seeming not to care about how exposed he was in that moment. He could have taken plenty of pictures and the other most likely wouldn't have even noticed. His huge, magenta eyes were focused on the screen, squinting, and he was completely engrossed in the movie, even more than the teen was absorbed in watching him. He made plenty of comments about how stupid the human crew was during the first part, pointing his fingers and screaming, then moved to mock their "inferior technology" and yelled insults when Ash turned out to be an android. When, finally, the monster, the _alien_ , showed up, in all his frightful power and bloodthirsty cruelty, Zim and GIR ended up clinging to each other, the latter screaming appalled and the former cursing at every jump scare, in a language the human assumed being Irken, antennae pressed flat against his skull.

The whole situation would have been ironic and incredibly funny, if Dib's mind hadn't been as busy with confusion as his mouth was with the apparently endlessly amount of waffles that had been explicitly made for his presence. Because, if the Invader wasn't trying to sneak past his defences to kill him or at least force him to lose their war, then what exactly was he doing? He couldn't be hanging out with him just for the sake of the act itself…Could he?

The questions remained, once again, unanswered. After the movie had ended, the Irken moved back to commenting how stupid the crew had been and Dib had found himself agreeing, even if only half-heartedly, his thoughts still elsewhere. When even the alien's rambling died off, they sat quietly on the opposite sides of the couch, GIR sat between them and happily licking what was left of their snack off the plate. The silence stretched for a few minutes, becoming more and more awkward each time their eyes accidentally met.

In the end, it was the human to break the silence. He shouldn't be there, on the alien's sofa, perfectly healthy, not trying to fight the other or to collect evidence to expose him. It felt…not exactly _wrong_ , because, all in all, despite his anxious confusion, those two hours hadn't been unpleasant, but it was weird because that wasn't how he and Zim usually interacted. Not at all.

"Uh, it's…it's well past dinner time. I have to go. Gaz is probably waiting for me to eat and she gets awful when she's hungry," he announced, clearing his throat and getting up. He shifted on his feet nervously for a moment, not really wanting to leave without an explanation. "Uh, you picked up this particular movie because…I "like space and ships and stuff", just as for the model?" He ended up asking, quoting the words that the Invader had used that morning in class.

The Irken didn't turn to look at him, but kept his eyes focused on the now black screen as he shrugged. "Of course. My in-depth researches informed me that this movie is what you humans consider a "cult". Still, if I had known that it was so _bad_ , Zim would have rented a different one."

Dib raised an eyebrow. "You didn't like it?" He couldn't help asking. The alien had looked so absorbed in the movie that he had assumed that he was enjoying it, and a lot.

Zim made a face. "How on Irk could have I liked such a moronic… _stuff_!" He protested loudly, looking almost offended by the mere suggestion. "It was utterly stupid! Unrealistic! That female pig had no chances to escape the monster and yet she did, while doing nothing but screaming all the time. And…" A flick of nervousness passed on his face. "That beast reminded me of that cursed Hogulus on Hobo 13. Meat-thirsty, salivating, disgusting creature!"

The perplexed expression on the teen's face turned into a worried one. "Wait, there are creatures like the alien of the movie…for real?" He asked, feeling stupid almost as soon as he had posed the question. His rival's words had been an answer clear enough on that point. Besides, it would have been dumb to think that the Irkens were the only malevolent race in the whole universe.

The Invader clearly shared his last thought because he addressed him an unimpressed look. "Duh. There are creatures far, far worse than that beast!" He claimed loudly, jumping on his feet. "Bigger, crueller, more dangerous, uglier! You've no idea of what's out there, worm child. No idea of what the Mighty Zim has seen and faced before coming to this dirty ball of filth!" He lifted his chin, in his body shifting in that stance that screamed overconfidence and superiority. "But nothing in the universe is as scary and powerful and unstoppable as the Irken race of course."

The human rolled his eyes. "Of course, of course," he muttered, clearly not meaning his words, even if most likely the alien wouldn't catch on it, since he was too busy boasting. He, instead, was more interested in the things his nemesis claimed to have seen during his life. For the first time, he realised that he didn't have the slightest idea of how old Zim was. The other looked younger than he was when he was wearing his disguise, especially now that Dib was taller than him, but when the wig and the contact lenses were off his appearance was simply ageless, at least to human eyes. He pondered asking for a moment, but in the end he discarded the idea. Even if the Invader seemed to be in a more or less compliant mood, he didn't want to push his luck. If that behaviour persisted in the next days, he would try and see if he could get more information out of him.

Zim did notice the teen's tone and he looked at him suspiciously, one eye squinted and the other fully open. "Are you questioning the greatness of the Irken Empire, Dib-stink?" He demanded, in a threatening tone. "Haven't the misfortunes you've suffered through these years, by my hand, been a proof enough of what my race is capable of?"

Dib was seriously tempted to make a sharp remark about the fact that the only thing he had witnessed during the time they had shared had been the alien's incompetence, but he bit his tongue and decided not to mention it. The Invader might have shown a huge deal of stupidity, but his technology was amazing, so advanced that he, even with months and months of researches and a higher QI than the average, still wasn't anywhere close to understanding its complexness.

Zim had his genius moments too, even if they usually showed when he wasn't trying to complete his mission, and they betrayed much more intelligence and raw potential than one could have imagined. Unfortunately for the Irken and luckily for Earth, the alien's carelessness, arrogance and craziness had never allowed him to exploit those two traits of his. Gaz was persuaded that Zim was simply too stupid to destroy the planet, while Dib had slowly come to think that, instead, he would have been more than capable to do it, if he had truly applied himself to the task. Instead, for some reason, he never used that capability properly and often his plans blew up in his face because of his negligence.

"I wouldn't dare," he answered, not even thinking about voicing those thoughts out aloud. He didn't want to accidentally cause the Irken to start taking his mission with the right, calculating, less crazy kind of seriousness that he needed to succeed. "Listen," he hurried to add, wanting to change the subject. "You know that there are more _Alien_ movies, don't you? And a lot of other Sci-Fic movies. You might even like some of them."

Zim scoffed, showing that he clearly disagreed. "I strongly doubt that. There's nothing on this filthy pig planet that I like," he claimed, but the hostility that had come back in his attitude melted away. He was still squinting, but now more out of questioning curiosity. "Should I read an invitation in your words, Dib?"

The human blinked. That wasn't what he had meant, when he had made the comment, but he could see why the alien had interpreted it that way. He hesitated. Was it wise to repeat the couple of hours they had just spent together? He wasn't sure that he wanted to put up with the Invader's new, weirdly friendly attitude more than it was necessary, but, on the other hand, it might be a way to keep a close eye on him while he tried to figure out what exactly was going on. It wasn't the most reasonable choice with few doubts, but that whole situation was already defying the laws of logic and reason, so perhaps it might be the right decision.

"If you want to," he ended up saying with a shrug, trying to sound casual despite the attentive gaze he kept on the alien. "If you're trying to gain more knowledge on how humans picture beings from outer space, I'm the right person to address you towards the right researching material." That statement was carefully studied. He hoped that it would help him probing around a bit, seeing if he could catch at least a glimpse of what was truly going on in his rival's mind, and he also wanted to see if he could get another normal reaction out of the other. Normal for what Zim was concerned at least. Like a fit of paranoia or something along those lines.

The half-closed magenta eye narrowed even more at his words. "Why would you ever offer to help Zim if I really wanted to do that? What are _you_ planning, Earth monkey?" The Invader demanded, suspicion dripping from his tone, just as the teen had predicted. However, the moment of almost normalcy, as Dib's growing sense of anticipation, was short lived because a second later the cautious look dropped completely from the Irken's face. "But since I'm not interested in collecting that kind of information, I will come to your house after school tomorrow then, Dib-human. Make sure to have a movie that can appeal the intellect of the Mighty Zim."

The human gaped. For a split moment he had thought that he was finally about to get, if not answers, at least the reassurance that things were still somehow normal, but his expectations had been crushed as quickly as they had risen. Even the nickname that had been attached to the second part of the alien's speech was mostly neutral, although he was pretty sure that Zim considered the word "human" to be an insult in itself.

"Uh, make it after dinner? Like eight p.m. or later. I…I got to study for a test tomorrow afternoon," was all he could say, unable to take back the invitation he hadn't really chosen to extend. "Also, Gaz would kill me if I monopolised the TV during her screen time."

"That's acceptable," the Invader granted, pleased by the lack of protest. He then extended his arms, starting to push the teen towards the entrance of the building. Catching the hint, GIR detached himself from the now completely clean plate and rushed past them, opening the door, so that his master could effectively shove their guest outside.

Zim stopped on the threshold, hesitating, on hand wrapped around the inner handle, looking like he was struggling to find the words. "Your company…hasn't been completely unpleasant today," he settled to say in the end, with a small nod. "I'll see you tomorrow at school, human." And with that he closed the door in the other's face, without giving him a chance to answer.

Dib remained frozen in his spot, his mind slowly catching up with what had just happened and especially with the words he had been addressed. He could count on the fingers of one hand the times when Zim had "complimented" him, meaning mostly that he had used a litotes, as in that case. However, in all the other occasions, the statements had been made after he had just proved himself exceptionally useful, so much that the Invader hadn't been able to deny it, or during the very few occasions in which they had been reluctant allies. This time, instead, he hadn't done anything so spectacular to extort the admission from his nemesis. After all, it wasn't like Zim had made their time together hard, quite the contrary, which was, in itself, just as absurd as the alien's behaviour.

Slowly sinking his hands in his pockets, the teen shook his head and turned around, starting to make his way towards his house. He could feel a headache raising in his skull. He was already tired of trying to figure out his rival's stunts for the moment. He needed a break. Perhaps even to sleep on it. Maybe his brain would offer him an answer in the form of a dream or as an epiphany the next day at breakfast. For now he had better focus on something that he could handle. Like hurrying home before Gaz decided that he deserved to be beaten up because he had made her starve.

With one last look in the direction of the creepy, alien house, he picked up a quicker pace and hurried towards his destination, determined to leave behind its dweller together with all his doubts and pointless hypotheses.

Zim waited for his sensors to confirm that the human had left the neighbourhood, before turning on his heels and taking the elevator down to his labs. The preparations for the "movie night", to use an Earthen way of saying, had taken up more time than he had expected and he hadn't got a chance to have a look at the tests he had finally had the Computer run on him.

He stopped in front of the main screen, tapping a few buttons on the keyboards and loading the data that had been collected. Attentive magenta eyes followed carefully the Irken words and numbers flooding in front of them, as a frown appeared on the Invader's face, getting deeper and deeper as he kept on reading. As it had become clear, there was something wrong with him. Organically speaking. The hormones levels in his body were all messed up and half of the electrical sequence that connected his PAK to his brain and organs was altered. The change in the biochemistry explained his moods, which in turn dictated his weird behaviour, but he couldn't figure out what exactly was causing it, no matter how hard he stared at the screen. He had to admit that he wasn't exactly trying _that_ hard, because bringing himself to care was hard. If he had been in himself he would have been screaming in frustration and perhaps a bit of anxiety, but instead the lingering contentment he was feeling prevented him from truly worrying.

He leant against the console, resting his palms at its sides. Perhaps it was just a temporary fluctuation, something due to the environment or a space influence, like the moult during the Galactic Equinox but more long-lasting. It had only been two days after all and it wasn't like whatever was messing with him had caused him problems. He simply hadn't hurt anyone nor tried to take over the Earth in the last forty-four hours. It wasn't such a big deal, considering that he had been on the planet for over than three years and a half already.

Zim cocked his head on his side. There was that pressing impulse to spend time with Dib too. _That_ might have become a problem, if he hadn't been more careful. For now the human was too shocked by his unexplained attitude to do something about it, but as soon as he would recover and understand the situation he would have surely tried to take advantage of his chemical induced willingness. He couldn't let that happen. Still, the urge was almost too hard to fight. He had found it difficult even to keep the insults in his speeches whenever he addressed the teen and that showed how severe the situation was. The best strategy would be to keep catching his rival off guard until he had regained control of himself somehow or until the issue had fixed itself.

"Computer, scan the Earth atmosphere for changes in its status and substances that might be affecting my physiology," he ordered, pushing himself away from the console. "Also, remind me to monitor my conditions every six hours. I want to know if I'm improving." The "or getting worse" went unsaid, because that wasn't a possibility he wanted to analyse.

"It will be done. And, Master, if you allow me to make a suggestion, you should take the Voot Runner and check the solar system of the planet for any anomaly," the machine offered in response, as its powerful circuits instantly established a connection with any Earthen device useful for its task. "It's more likely that the source of your…problem comes from there."

"Yeah, I have considered this," the Invader nodded, crossing his arms, a pensive expression on his face. "The day after tomorrow is Saturday, which means that the Earth training area is closed, so I'll do as you said. Thanks for the suggestion."

A weird silence fell on the lab as those words left the Irken's mouth. The Computer reproduced a polite fit of cough and Zim's antennae perked up in realisation before falling flat backwards again, in a display of slight nervousness. He was starting to creep himself out too.

"The worst thing is that I can't even get truly upset about all this," the Invader groaned after a moment, running a hand over his face. "I'm making a fool out of myself. This isn't how a proud Irken soldier should behave! As if my talk with the Tallest yesterday hadn't been enough, I've been _fraternising_ with the enemy. We _need_ to find a solution, or at least to find out how much I have to wait to get back to normal. Quickly."

"I agree with you, for once. I've always detested your manners, but this new demeanour of yours is scaring me," the machine agreed and it would have probably been frowning if it had been able to. "Still, I have to admit that it's nice to finally be appreciated."

Zim tried and epically failed to glare at his Computer. "Hope that I won't remember what you just said when I'll be normal again, or you might just have signed up for being reprogrammed."


	4. Chapter 4

Hello, people!

Two chapters in a row because I realised that I forgot to post on here...And a small warning. The next chapter will be delayed because I've got a big exam coming and I really need to start studying hard for it. *sigh*

So, chapter four and movie number 2! "The Day the Earth stood still" is one of my favourite, recent sci-fic movies (together with "Arrival" and "Interstellar", if you're interested in some other title!) and I found it quiet appropriate for the theme of this part of the story, especially because it gave me a chance to write down the conversation that follows in the storyline. I'm curious to see if it's just me or if someone will agree xD Anyway, if you haven't seen it, I recommend the movie in any case ^^  
For the rest, the chapter works pretty much like the previous one (just that here there's a ton more of anomaly-induced ZaDf, in which I totally indulged. Guilty as charged), plus Gaz's mostly silent but vital contribution.

Enough of my rambling now. As always, I want to offer my sincere thanks to all the people who are reading the story!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encourage. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

Enjoy!

* * *

The night didn't bring any sudden revelation to Dib. He went to bed without having the slightest clue of what could be up with Zim and woke up with his ideas still confused. The only change was that he started to consider another kind of explanation, aside from the one that the alien's behaviour could all be part of a scheme. What if the Irken was _ill_? Or if there was something or someone screwing up with him? It was another possibility that he should explore, even if it left him feeling even more unsure than his inability to read through the line of his nemesis's supposed masterplan. What if it turned out that there was really something wrong with the other? What would he do?

The question haunted the teen for the whole morning in class and kept him glancing at where Zim sat, unusually quiet and calm. Helping him was out of question, because it would mean setting the Invader back on track on his plans for world destruction. Should he exploit the situation to finally succeeding in exposing his rival and get rid of the threat once and for all? Two years ago, he wouldn't have hesitated to do it. However, things were different now.

He and Zim had forged some sort of balance and he had a very hard time picturing his life without his enemy from outer space in it. Even the prospect of being able to dissect the alien, which once used to allure him, had lost most of his dark charm. He still hated the Irken, of course, and was ready to do everything in his power to stop his crazy plans, but their constant battling had, paradoxically, brought them closer and closer. He was painfully aware that, ironically, Zim was the closest thing he had to a friend. Protecting the planet was his duty, but getting rid of the alien was no longer an option, unless it became his only choice. Deep down, he knew that sooner or later he would be forced to put aside his personal feelings, that weird attachment made of hatred, fascination and recognition, to do the right thing, but that moment still hadn't come, so he refused to consider the idea.

He had half expected to have the Invader sitting down at his table during the lunch break, but instead the Irken took a free table and sat by himself, poking his lunch for half an hour before throwing it away, as per usual. However, Dib could have sworn that, when those fake violet eyes had scanned the room looking for an empty spot, they had lingered on him for a moment, a spark of hesitation lighting them up. This had led him to ponder whether or not he should approach his nemesis himself, but he had discarded the idea. He still knew too little about the truth behind their current situation and he didn't want to risk making a move that could have dangerous, unforeseen consequences, especially when he himself still hadn't decided how to act on his part.

He hadn't seen much of the alien during the afternoon, since he had been the one to finish lessons early that day and had chosen to head home, while apparently the other was stuck in class till much later. In a way, it was a relief, even if their only contacts had consisted in the Irken's morning greeting, not unlike the ones of the previous two days, and the goodbye wave the alien had sent in his direction when he had picked up his books and left the classroom. Apparently the Invader knew his timetable by memory, just as the teen knew his. He was sure that Gaz would have had something to say about that, most likely a comment about dumbness and obsession, but he had stopped listening to his sister's disapproving statements and innuendos a long time ago.

Once he was in the safe space of his room, door locked to avoid being disturbed, he took a moment to breathe, laying his head down on the desk, over his math book, and closing his eyes. It was in moments like that one that he wondered if, as a kid, he should have listened to his father and focused on "real science", instead of keeping chasing ghosts and Yetis. If he had, now he wouldn't be dealing with a psychotic alien. However, on the other hand, perhaps Earth would have been already destroyed and mankind enslaved by that point. He groaned. Those were also the times when he wondered if the freedom of the human race was really worth risking his mental sanity.

╔ IZ ╗

When a knock echoed in the living room of the Membrane residence, the frown on Gaz's face deepened. They had just finished eating, this time at a decent time, and her stupid brother had fled upstairs, not wanting to deal with her for a good reason. She was still pissed for having been forced to wait for him well past their usual dinnertime the night before, all because the idiot had spent his late afternoon at the dumb alien's base doing who-knows-what. Not fighting to defend Earth, that was sure, because the older teen had been in perfect order when he had got back, aside from been all sweaty, but that was because he had run home to her. He had to have been studying the Irken's weird behaviour or something. Not that she cared. What had mattered was that her stomach had been grumbling for a good while when he had finally arrived and so it was wise for him to stay out of her way till her irritation passed. However, that meant that she had to stand up and open the damn door.

Hissing out a curse, she hit the pause button on her game and stood up, running a casual hand on her half-tight black dress, fingers brushing her skull pendant. She hoped that she wouldn't have to beat up whoever had had the guts to disturb her night because, while the idea was indeed appealing, it was Dib's turn to take care of the laundry that week and of course her moronic brother still hadn't had done anything about it. She was in shortage of clean clothes and so she couldn't afford spilling blood on the few she had left.

She opened the door, her best hostile expression on his face, ready to send away whoever was on the other side, but her expression faltered, even if just for a small moment, when she found herself face to face with a disguised Zim. The Invader had his arms full of what looked like a pack of popcorn and two tall paper mugs, all three sporting the emblem of the Irken Empire.

"Hello, Gaz-sister," the alien greeted, moving the fingers of one of his hand in a clumsy attempt of waving. There was a real hint of cheerfulness in his voice that made the girl frown.

His good mood had stayed incredibly stable and had even improved a bit, compatibly with the new changes of his body chemicals, but he also felt satisfied because he had been able to go through his day acting more or less like his usual self and without embarrassing himself with unplanned attacks of niceness. Aside from when he had helped that girl in the corridor to pick up the books that had fallen from her locker. Or when he had bought a snack from the vending machine for that creepy human named Keef. Or when he had _volunteered_ to be Gretchen's partner for that stupid literature project because no one else wanted to be paired up with her. Those actions had gained him, respectively, a weird look, a hug that still made him cringe at the memory and a scream of horror. Then there was the fact that he had stopped to the store on his way back to the base to buy GIR that stupid monkey plushie he had been screaming about lately. And he thanked the Computer again. Twice. But he still had resisted the urge to call the Tallest just for the sake of it, to accept Keef's invitation to hang out in the weekend and to offer Gretchen to do the whole project on his own. It hadn't been all _so_ bad, considering that.

"Is the Dib home?" He went on, seeing that Gaz hadn't moved to let him in. Apparently his rival hadn't informed her that he would be coming. It was clear from her half annoyed, half puzzled look. "He told me to come over after your dinner time."

The girl looked at him, up and down, for some more moment, then turned on her heels and headed back towards the couch, leaving the door open. She had got over her surprise quickly once she had figured out why the Irken was there and the emotion had faded back into annoyance. So that was their game now. The two idiots were…circling each other or something.

"DIB!" She yelled as she flopped down on the cushions. Her brother had better get down there immediately, because she had no intention of dealing with Zim on her own, not even in this nicer, weird version of him. Oh, she knew exactly how to make that happen. "Your alien _boyfriend_ is here!"

The noise of something falling from the ground was heard from upstairs and a few moments later, the older teen came down the stairs, half running, half jogging. The frown on his face matched the girl's, but it was nowhere near as threatening and it surely wasn't as scary as the small smirk that opened on his sister's lips when he appeared as quickly as she had predicted.

"Gaz! What the hell?" Dib exclaimed, incredulous. It was bad enough that everyone seemed utterly persuaded that he and Zim were best friends, even if they spent all their time, or almost, fighting and screaming at each other. The last thing he needed was for people to start thinking they were dating. At that point he really would lose any chance to get even just one person to believe him when he tried to expose his nemesis.

Gaz ignored him completely, eyes locked back on her game, so he decided to let her be. Trying to fight her would be a useless waste of time. Besides, he didn't want to risk angering her when she was already pissed at him. So, instead, he turned his gaze the Invader, who had closed the door and taken a seat on the other end of the couch, setting his snacks down next to him.

"Hey, Zim," he greeted, eyeing the Irken suspiciously. The other looked pretty much as he had in the morning. No sign of hostility, no calculating, crazy glimpse in his eyes. "You're…" He shot a look at the clock. "…Perfectly on time," he finished, awkwardly. "And you brought…food?"

"I didn't trust you not to poison Zim with your disgusting human food," the Invader shot back, unimpressed by the human's uncertainty, making a face and popping a couple of popcorns in his mouth. "So I took care of my own dose of nourishment." His gaze turned expectantly and stretched his legs, resting his boots on the coffee table. "This movie you promised me? Where is it?"

The teen seemed to suddenly remember why exactly his nemesis was sat on his couch. "Oh yeah. Right away." Mentally cursing himself for his inability to navigate the weird situation without making a fool of himself, he walked to the TV and crouched down in front of it, grabbing the DVD he had left next to it and slipping it inside the player.

"Uh, Gaz? Are you staying or…?" He asked, standing up and retrieving the remote control, his amber eyes moving to his sister, who had showed no intention of removing herself from the room. Under his question there was a clear request for her to leave, mostly because, if she didn't, he would be stuck sitting in the middle of the couch, far too close to his nemesis for his liking.

"Staying," she answered without even looking up from her videogame. However, she found the time to detach a hand from the console and wave it. "Go ahead and start this movie."

Dib rolled his eyes, almost wanting to point out that, if she planned to spend the whole time playing, she could as well do it in another room, but in the end he decided against it. He had learnt during the years that there was no winning a fight with the girl, not even a verbal one, and he wanted to avoid any other unpleasant, uncomfortable comment thrown in his direction. He sighed deeply and took the only free spot on the sofa, shifting a bit with evident uneasiness, before deciding that, if he had to sat there, he could as well get comfortable and propping his feet on the coffee table, mimicking the Irken's posture.

"Uh, what's that?" He questioned, as he hit the play button on the remote, nodding towards the paper mugs set against his rival's side.

"Irken soda," Zim answered easily, chewing another handful of popcorns, his eyes already locked on the screen, even if for the moment it was just showing the usual FBI warning. He now knew that it wasn't a threat, but just something that was put in every DVD to deter humans from copying its contents and selling it for their own gain. Or something along those lines. He picked up one of the cups, noticing the hint of curiosity in the teen's voice. "Try it."

"For real?" Dib said before he could stop himself, a mix of surprise and delight in his tone, which gained him a scoff from Gaz. He couldn't blame her. He had sounded like a naïve child, but that was the first time he was being offered alien food. He had been in space, travelled to other dimensions even, but he had always been too busy battling and never had a chance to enjoy the experience fully, let alone explore the cultures he had met. That and the offer was the last thing he would have expected from the other. The alien had caught him off guard. Again.

"I mean, you sure that it's not poisonous for me?" He tried to make amend and sound suspicious, even if it was far too late. "I've seen what human food does to you and I don't have a PAK to prevent me from dying in the case of a very, very bad allergic reaction."

"How am I supposed to know if it's compatible with your inferior physiology?" Zim pointed out, rolling his eyes. "I have no interest in figuring out which kinds of Irken food a human can eat. I'm too busy trying to lengthen the incredibly short list of Earthen foods that will _not_ kill _me_." He stretched his arm slightly, bringing the paper mug closer to his nemesis's face. "If you react badly, I'll take you to my base and heal you. Anyway, it shouldn't be necessary. For the most, it's made of sugary compounds. You never showed any sort of allergy to carbohydrates. If I can eat Earthen ones, you can manage Irkens." A small, sly smirk appeared on his face. "Or the truth is that you're a coward, Dib-wimp?"

The human scowled at the last question, tearing the paper cup out of the alien's hand. The grin on the Invader's face had caused a few bells to go off in his head, but the childish provocation had pushed him to ignore them. He didn't really trust Zim to keep his word and help him out if something went wrong with the drink, but, if what the other had said about the soda composition was true, he shouldn't have needed any urgent medical attention.

"Shut up, alien scum," he mattered under his breath, looking more confident than he actually felt as he wrapped his lips around the thin straw. He had one more moment of hesitation, made even worse by the fact that those fake violet irises had moved from the screen to his face, but in the end he managed to gather enough courage to suck up a small amount of liquid and swallow it.

He closed his eyes, waiting for a wave of agonising pain that never came. The only thing that hit him, dazing his taste buds for a few moments, was the absurdly sweet flavour. He couldn't exactly describe what else there was, aside from a crazy amount of sugar, because the taste was different from anything else he had ever tried, but, once overcome the shock caused by the cloying flavour, he had to admit that it wasn't that bad.

"Not deadly. Unless you count that I'd surely get diabetes if I drank one of these daily," he commented, taking a proper mouthful of the beverage before handing it back to the Irken. "If all your people eat are things like this, I'm starting to understand why you can't stand most of our food. Allergic reactions aside."

Zim turned his head back towards the TV, almost as if the lack of an extremely bad consequence had made him lose interest in the whole conversation. "Keep it. You don't have any snacks for yourself and I've got another," he stated, ignoring what the human had said. As to underline the concept, he picked up the other paper mug and took a sip from it. "Now be quiet, worm child. Zim wants to watch this pathetic movie you've picked."

A part of Dib wanted to feel touched by the gesture, as he had been pleasantly surprised by the edible pancakes the day before, but once again he refused to listen to it. This was the Invader that was still trying to destroy his planet and that had spilled his blood many times in the past he was talking to. Whatever was causing the Irken to act that way, secret big plan or weird alien medical condition, he couldn't allow himself to be distracted by it. He had to keep his guard up in any case. So, he simply nodded, swallowing the "thank you" that had come to his lips, and moved his attention to the movie in turn.

╔ IZ ╗

"So, how did you like it?" Dib asked once the movie was over, getting up from his comfy position against the cushions to go and retrieve the DVD.

If Zim had seemed totally engrossed while watching _Alien_ , this time he had looked _hypnotised_. His eyes hadn't left the screen for a moment and at one point he had even completely forgotten about the snacks for which he had been groping around during the first part of the movie. His eyes had got huger and huger and he had been mostly quiet for the whole time. The only exceptions had been a few, awed comments at the sight of the fictional extra-terrestrials' technology, a few yells against the way the "foolish humans" on the screen had treated the "obviously superior specimen" that had contacted them and one of his typical mad laughs when the swarm of nano-machines had erupted from the body of the huge robot.

The latter sound had been cut short by a nasty glare from Gaz. The girl had set her game down about twenty minutes after the start of the movie, apparently deciding that she wanted to see it too. Irken's noises hadn't been welcome to her, so it was a good thing that the Invader had chosen to limit them for his own reasons. Of course, she had picked the console back up as soon as the screen had turned black and now was promptly ignoring them once again.

"That technology! It would allow me to destroy this ball of dirt and complete an Organic Sweep without even needing to wait for the Armada!" Zim exclaimed jumping on his feet, arms in the air and eyes huge. Under the wig, his antennae were twitching in excitement. If he had managed what the aliens from the movie had almost done, his Tallest would have been greatly impressed with him. Everyone would have been forced to admit how amazing he was. If he only managed to create something similar and control it, he would be unstoppable.

Dib's last gulp of Irken soda went down the wrong pipe at those words. The super sweet liquid caused him to cough so hard that he found himself doubled over, as his body tried to remove the foreign liquid from the conduct. The thought that the Irken could have taken _inspiration_ for his plans from the movie hadn't crossed his mind at all. Now he realised that it had been a huge mistake and that he should have chosen the DVD more carefully. He had focused on the story, on the characters development, on the deeper meaning that the ending seemed to want to offer, but it was evidently that the Invader's attention had focused on completely different elements. As it was natural. Irkens were creatures instinctively attracted to destruction and conquest and that's all his rival had probably seen in the movie. A masterfully conducted, even if failed, invasion.

He stared at Zim, catching his breath. The focused, thoughtful look in his eyes was worrisome and he could easily picture his magenta orbs shining crazily behind the contact lens, just as he could almost hear the wheels whirling inside his head, or rather in his PAK, as the other's messed up brain put together another crazy, dangerous, most likely bloody scheme for world domination.

"Hey, I haven't invited you over so that you could come up with a new way to destroy my race," he protested, voice still rough from all the coughing he had done. "And that's not the question I asked you." He felt his irritation growing. He knew that perhaps this was all a waste of time and breath, but he wouldn't give up without saying his piece, without a fight. Not when his nemesis was concerned. "The movie wasn't about conquering Earth. Or destroying it. Not really at least. Dammit, Zim. Did you…Did you even pay attention to what happened in there or not?"

Gaz raised her eyes from her game, looking speculative for a moment when Dib met her gaze briefly. For a second, he believed that she would step into the discussion, whether to insult them or to actually participate he couldn't say, but in the end she seemed to decide that it wasn't worth it and went back to minding her own business.

The Irken shot him another unimpressed look. Since he hadn't been glaring at anyone in those two days, for the same, mysterious reason why he wasn't being a sadistic bastard, those apparently were the nastier kind of glances he was currently capable of. "I have eyes, Dib-thing," he stated flatly, mild annoyance evident in his tone. "Those aliens wanted to "save the Earth" by destroying humankind so that the planet could start anew, but their agent in the end gets convinced that there's still hope for your pathetic race and so he chooses to give them another chance." He waved a hand. "So _unrealistic_. Surely, if he had really been from such an advanced and superior race, he wouldn't have allowed anyone to change his mind, let alone an annoying worm child and his foolish mother unit. An Irken would have never let a human talk him out of his mission. Not even if they were a stupid, low, short Service Drone."

The teen ran a hand on his face. "I believe that he was for a more advanced race. So advanced that they had taken upon them the task to judge other species, to deem which are worthy of progressing and which must be ended. For the _greater good_ , not because they want to conquer the universe," he started to talk back, trying to keep a calm tone. It was hard after hearing the smugness in his rival tone as the latter had spoken the last statements. "And he changed his mind in the end because he understood the potential of humanity, despite all the flaws and ugly facades. He recognised in mankind the story of his own people, who have gone through a very violent, dark age before elevating themselves to be the most powerful, wisest being of the Galaxy. Perhaps of the Universe." His amber eyes narrowed. "I bet that the Irkens weren't born such a super power either."

" _LIES_!" Zim yelled, voice high pitched enough to hurt, gaining a murderous glare from Gaz. This time, however, he ignored the girl, since his attention was completely focused on the other human in the room. "The Irken Empire has always been nothing but great!"

Dib pinched the bridge of his nose, also exploiting the position of his slightly bowed head to hide a chuckle. That sounded more like the Zim he knew and it was oddly comforting. "I'm not doubting the…power that your people have now," he tried again, crossing his arms on his chest. He had doubts on a lot of things that concerned the Irken race, basing himself on his past experience, not just with the alien standing now in front of him, but also on the much more limited ones he had had with Tak and the Tallest. However, their military power wasn't one of those things. "I'm just saying that you haven't come into existence being the united, mighty Empire you're now. Because that's clearly not possible. You must have started somewhere. Been like us at some point. At our level of development, I mean." He cringed a bit as he realised that he had compared the Irkens to his own race. He just hoped that the way in which he had amended the sentence would be enough to prevent the Invader from throwing a fit at that. Zim's people sounded quite xenophobic in general, but he knew that his nemesis had a special contempt for most humans, maybe because he was stuck among them.

The alien narrowed his eyes, feeling a first, real spark of rage for the first time in two days when the human dared to imply that the Irkens had been as pitiful as mankind was. He refused to even consider the concept. Admitting it would imply that the meat worms that inhabited the planet had the potential to reach, one day, the power of the Empire. The notion was simply ridiculous. Just as much as what had been implied in the ending of the movie. However, on the other end, he couldn't deny that Dib had a point. His race had developed through the centuries. There had been an era, very, very far back in time, when they weren't as united and organised as they were now. An era before the Control Brains, an era without PAKs and without genetically engineered smeets. An era when his people were confined on Irk and didn't even dream that one day they would be invading more than one Galaxy.

"You might have a point, human," he grumbled under his breath, turning his head away from the teen. "We haven't always been as we are." He didn't even try to hide his reluctance and he refused to elaborate any further. He wasn't going to admit that, at some point, his people had been _weak_ , even defenceless. Because, even once they had set their goals on the stars, conquest hadn't come easy. Not at first. There had been burning, shameful defeats. He was glad that he hadn't lived through those times. "Happy?"

Dib opened his mouth to reply, but he found that he didn't know what to say. He could have gloated for having won that verbal battle, but he didn't feel like it since it hadn't been supposed to be a fight. He was just trying to make the alien see the point of the movie. "Yeah," he simply said, only half-heartedly. Then a thought hit him. "Hey, do you think that there could be a civilisation like the one of the movie? Like an intergalactic judge that decides the destiny of the other races?"

Zim's anger deflated at the question and a thoughtful look appeared on his face. "Never heard of such a thing. If they exist, they haven't dared to mess with the Irken Empire. Smart choice," he answered after a moment of silence, the smugness coming back. It was mostly an act, though, this time. If such an alien race existed, and based their choices on the same criteria of the one of the movie, then his people would have failed the test, sensationally. He wasn't saying that he thought that they would have been able to wipe away his race, but one thing was sure. Of all the values that this hypothetical race deemed as worthy, nothing could be find inside the Empire policy. They were advanced, but all they had achieved, all their intelligence, all their technology was devoted to destruction. They would have been considered a menace, in the eyes of the universal judges, a loose cannon that had to be terminated. As Irkens did with their Defectives.

"What was the title of the movie again?" He asked, before his rival could add anything to his words. "I believe it is worth a more careful studying." He shot the human a glance. "And not just for the amazing style of invasion."

" _The day the Earth stood still_ ," Dib answered, biting back a small sigh. "So, can I assume that you liked it?" It wasn't every day that you heard an Irken praising something that wasn't related to his own race. What Zim had seen in it had to have really made an impression on him.

The Invader was quiet for a few moments, but in the end he nodded. "I can safely say that, for once, your inferior human tastes have brought up something worth of Zim's attention."

The scythe-haired boy grinned slightly, despite the hint of awkwardness he felt at the admission. That was almost even better, and weirder too, than the alien saying that he hadn't minded his company.


	5. Chapter 5

Hello there!

So, here goes chapter five, which is pretty much the continuation of the previous one. So, We have Professor Membrane making a small appearance just for the sake of having Zim embarrassing himself than he had already (pretty much like his transmission with his Tallest in chapter 2...and I just realised I didn't address that in my comments to the chapter 0.o" Anyway, I obviously love torturing him). Also, there's a small hint of how things are between Dib and his father. It looks more or less the same, but not really and this will become relevant later on, so keep it in mind! For the rest, it's once again all awkwardness and Zim finally making up his mind about the fact that he needs to start actively *doing something* about his situation.  
As for Dib, he's starting to admit that this version of Zim isn't *so* bad, even if the alien is still pushy and stubborn and loud and even creepier than his usual. He's still weirded out for the most, though.  
Gaz is still in the background wondering what she had done wrong in her life to deserve to have to deal with the two morons. I also mentioned more properly how her and Dib's relationship has shifted, a thing that I intend to explore a bit more later on, from her point of view. It might seem a bit sudden, but there's a whole reasoning behind her change of behaviour. Besides, I'd like to underline that it's been gradual, and not abrupt as it might seem from the scene.

I'm repetitive, but once again thanks to all the people who are reading the story. It really helps to know that there are people interested in my works. Feel free to let me know what you think and to even leave suggestions. I'd appreciate it a lot, whatever you have to say.

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encourage. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

Enjoy!

* * *

The evening came to an end not much time after that discussion, when Professor Membrane came back home. It was rare for the man to be around and both his children were caught off guard, since they weren't expecting him that day. Gaz's frown became less pronounced, sign that having her parent back was for her a welcomed surprise, and even Dib relaxed a bit more. His relationship with his father hadn't changed much in the last two years and the man still considered him insane as most of the people who knew him, but the teen had come to terms with that. He had realised that the Professor always tried to do what he thought was best, not only for them, but for humankind in general, and that was a trait that they somehow shared. Besides, he was well aware that their father loved both him and his sister, even if he wasn't able to express it properly.

"Oh, son, you invited your foreign friend over," the scientist commented after having warmly patted the girl on the head, finally noticing the alien sitting on the other side of the couch.

"Yeah, Zim came over to watch a movie," Dib nodded quickly, before the Invader could open his loud mouth and say something inappropriate. "I hope it's alright."

"Of course it is. I'm glad to see that you're finally starting to act a bit more like your age, instead of just chasing your…fantasies," the Professor stated, with a hint of real approval in his voice. "Now, if only you put those asides and start to embrace real science…" He let out a deep sigh. "So, what kind of movie? A real documentary? Something _pregnant_?"

"A movie about aliens," Zim answered in the teen's place. He had balled the now empty popcorn pack and had stuck it into one of the finished paper mugs. He wasn't going to leave any traces of Irken food around, in case his rival decided to analyse them. "Much better than the first one."

"Aliens, uh?" Membrane repeated, the delight that had touched his voice just a few moments before instantly disappearing. He turned his gaze towards his male offspring for a second, before locking it back on the Invader. "And tell me, child, do you happen to share my son's…interest for this silly parascience?"

Dib hanged his head slightly at his father's change of tone, mentally cursing his nemesis for his inability to keep his big mouth shut. Not that it would have changed anything. He knew far too well what his parent thought of his passions. His amber eyes, though, shot up again at the question that followed and he found himself looking at the Irken, curious to see what the other would have answered. Usually the Invader denied any connection between him and whatever was related to space and aliens, so he was expecting him to do the same this time. However, he was also aware that he might be surprised, considering his rival's current abnormal attitude.

Zim hesitated for a moment. Lying and pronouncing his usual answers on the matter would have been easy and, especially, it would have removed the man's attention from him. He didn't see him as a real threat, since he was, as most of his kind, clearly oblivious to the fact that he wasn't human, but it was also true that he was a scientist, one that wouldn't have hesitated to dissect him and use him for horrible experiments, given the chance. He also was extremely _tall_ and that trait alone made the Irken feel uneasy in his presence.

However, before he could open his mouth and blather some sort of agreement on how silly those subjects were, he caught the look on Dib's face at Membrane's change of tone and that caused a small squeeze in his spooch, followed by a feeling he didn't truly recognise. Apparently, his rival's troubles with his father unit were still ongoing. If he had made fun of the teen now, he would have just encouraged the man to show even more disapproval. He couldn't bring himself to do it. Stupid whatever-it-was that was messing with him.

"Zim thinks that there are plenty of aliens around the universe," he ended up stating, causing his nemesis to gape at him and even having Gaz lifting her eyes from her console, a look of surprise on her face. "Of course, there's no way that there's one on Earth," he quickly added then, offering a nervous grin. "That's ridiculous. No way. We're aaaall humans here. But out there…I'm sure that there is at least one mighty, amazing race that will conquer the universe and crash this ball of dirt under a rain of doom one day!" He gave a final nod, unable to hold back the impulse to brag, even if indirectly.

The Professor stared at him for one, long, intense second, making the Irken want to stand at attention as he did in front of his Tallest, and then let out another sigh. "Now I see why my son spends so much time in your company," he commented, shaking his head and sounding almost resigned. He then turned towards his children. "I'll be in my lab. Don't forget to brush your teeth before going to bed. I'll see you at breakfast." And without another word, he walked out of the room.

Zim instantly relaxed a bit when the imposing figure was gone, his instincts quieting down and stopping their pressing demand for him to submit to a creature that was most likely his superior. If Membrane had been Irken, the Invader would have been crawling at his feet by now. He was _taller_ than his Tallest, even if just for a couple of inches. It was deeply disturbing.

"I'm leaving," he announced, collecting his junk. He had to go back to the base and check the levels of his body chemicals and the pattern of the connection between his PAK and his organism. He needed to find a solution, there was no time to wait for the condition to solve itself. He had come to the point of subtly taking his enemy's defences, almost risking exposing himself in the process. The situation was much more severe than he had initially thought.

"Uh, Zim, wait a moment," Dib called him, following him quickly as he almost ran towards the main door. He rested a hand on the wooden surface, to prevent the alien from opening it, and shifted slightly on his feet. "I…" He started, stopping almost immediately because he wasn't sure of what he was going to say. He knew that the Irken hadn't meant to stand up for him, not truly, and that he had done it because either it served his own masterplan or he couldn't help himself because of whatever illness he had. However, he still felt that he owed him. No one had ever sided with him, especially not in front of his father, the famous and respected professor. "Thanks. For what you said to my Dad about the aliens and stuff."

The Invader felt two contrasting feelings blossoming inside him at those words. The first was an expected, shamed disgust, which made his skin crawl a bit as he fully realised the impression he had made on the outside. The second, instead, was something mostly new, a warmth spreading through his chest and then in all his body, making the other, unpleasant sentiment more bearable. He didn't know what it meant and he wasn't sure that he wanted to find out. He would worry about it later. Now, he needed to give the human an appropriate, dismissive answer.

"Don't flatter yourself, Earth monkey. I didn't do it for you as you seem to be implying," he stated with a scoff, grasping the handle and forcing the door open even if his nemesis was still resting his weight on it. "I would never do something so foolish like helping you."

A sly grin opened on the teen's face. "Oh, and then do tell. Why did you risk implying that there are alien lifeforms all around here?" He asked in a defiant tone, daring the Invader to come up with a credible answer. He knew what to expect this time. A stuttered absurdity. This was familiar, even if for once he was merely teasing, in an almost playful way, instead of harshly taunting and mocking his rival. It felt lighter, easier and he couldn't help thinking that he could have got used to this, if things between him and the Irken had been different.

Zim found himself caught off guard. Stupid, filthy human. The thought that he had helped him just to get made fun of as a result was almost making him mad. _Almost_. He did sense a difference in his nemesis's tone, though, something that made his words less sharp, as if they weren't aiming to hurt or upset him. He blinked, confused for a moment, then he realised what was going on. The worm child wasn't making fun of him, he was _joking_. The realisation hit him hard and for a moment he didn't know what to do with himself. He had been so focused on the struggle with his own moods and actions that he hadn't noticed that the demeanour of the people around him had changed together with his own. The less aggressive and threatening he acted, the more they seemed to relax around him. Everyone still thought that he was a freak, but they paid him less attention and even insulted him less. As for Dib, he got slightly friendlier the nicer Zim acted. Super weird.

Realising that he had been gaping at his rival for a good minute, he struggled to compose himself and to find a proper comeback, even if the effect would be ruined in any case by his silence. "I did it because…uh…Isn't it _obvious_? Of course not, not to your inferior human mind at least! To a superior Irken intellect, it's crystal clear," he exclaimed loudly, thrusting his chest forward to convey pride and confidence. "But since Zim feels generous today, I will enlighten your poorly developed intelligence, so that you can be bewildered by my amazing brilliance! I said those things to…uh, prove your parent unit wrong. So that, when I destroy his precious mankind before his eyes, he will remember this day and think about how blind and dumb he has been, having his future overlord warning him and not even realising it because of his…useless _…humanity_."

Dib felt a bit of satisfaction when he saw that his little teasing question had caught the alien off guard. It was a small victory, after having been the one to be constantly taken aback for two whole days. However, his amusement faded for most part as soon as his rival started to speak, throwing in as many insults as he could and coming up with one of his usual, dumb cover-ups. It wasn't the worst he had heard from him, though. He had to give it to him.

"Keep telling yourself that, you might start to believe it, space boy," he shot back with a scoff, but there was no real heat in his voice for once. "Whatever your reason to do that was, I appreciated it. So, shut up and take the thanks." He shifted as the Invader stepped out of the door. "I'll see you tomorrow in class?"

Zim glared, almost succeeding this time, but then nodded, refusing to drag the argument any further. He told himself that it was because it wasn't worth his time and because he had important things to do back at his base, but the truth was that he wouldn't have known how to answer. "Of course. What a dumb question." He turned his back to the human. "Have fun wasting time in your stupid, human restorative state, Dib-stink."

The teen rolled his eyes at the rude statement, but didn't comment. He was used to them by now. "Goodnight you too, Zim. Enjoy…whatever you do at night."

The Irken didn't answer and simply started to make his way towards his base, hearing the door being shut just a few moments after he had begun walking. There was a slight frown on his face, but it was there because he was forcing himself to scowl. He should be, considering how the whole day had gone. He had tried to delude himself into thinking that he could handle this _thing_ that was happening to him, but the truth was that he couldn't, no matter how hard he tried. Even in that moment, he could hardly keep himself from showing cheerfulness because, despite the humiliating way in which he had stood up for the Dib, he had _enjoyed_ himself that evening, watching the human's stupid movie, sharing his superior Irken soda with him and then discussing what they had seen. Even the tense encounter with his rival's father unit hadn't been so bad, that considered. The umpteenth sign that he was going _mad_.

He let his head fall back slightly, looking up at the sky. He could hardly see the stars with all that light pollution, but it didn't matter. He knew that they were there, he had even been close to some of them. The next night he would go up in space and make some surveys, as his Computer had suggested. He would have all the time, without the pressure of having to show up at the Hi Skool in the morning. Perhaps getting away from Earth would do him some good in itself. He hoped so, but he didn't really believe it would. Especially not if he would end up giving into the bad idea that was already taking shape into his brain.

╔ IZ ╗

It was past one in the morning when Dib woke up abruptly, with no idea of what had interrupted his slumber. His room was dark and quiet as it had been when he had gone to sleep a bit more than one hour before. He briefly looked around, confused and still half asleep, not even bothering to lift his head from the pillow or to reach for his glasses. Everything seemed to be in place and the space around him was made of nothing but blurry shadows, for what his sleepy eyes could see. Most likely he had been dreaming something weird and his brain had decided to wake him up to stop the vision. It wouldn't have been the first time.

With a yawn, he rolled on his side and snuggled the blankets closer to his body, intending to go back to sleep. Things at Hi Skool had been a little rushed that day between the test he had taken and the hour of physical education, a subject he positively _loathed_. He had also had a close encounter with his usual bullies as he headed towards the cafeteria, but luckily for him all he had got out of it had been a shove and a punch in the guts. Gaz had showed up to meet him for lunch before the real beating could start and the group of idiots had instantly vanished at the sight of his scary sister.

When they were younger, the girl never helped him out if he got in that kind of troubles, or with anything else for the matter, but things had been getting slightly better between them in the last year. It all had started when he had finally mastered up the courage to yell back at the son of a bitch who had been taunting him one day, while his pals kept him slammed into the wall. By chance, Gaz had been passing by in that right moment and he had noticed her expression shifting in a frown he had never seen before. One moment later, she was kicking the crap out of the bully, making clear that she, and Zim, were the only ones allowed to mess with her brother.

In the aftermath, she had refused to acknowledge the shift in their relationship, out of pride or maybe for the need to keep her façade up, but they both knew that it had been happening. Dib had speculated that the change might be due to them both maturing. Gaz still hated his guts most of the times and never stopped reminding him of how annoying and stupid he was, but she had become more protective of him, in her own way. He wasn't overjoyed by the fact that he was the one being protected, since he was the elder, but he had decided that, if that was how his sister wanted to express her affections, then he would take everything she was willing to offer. With their father almost always gone, she was the only real family he had.

The teen nuzzled into his pillow, already on his way back to unconsciousness. The room was chiller and it annoyed him a bit. He didn't really feel like getting up and closing the window. Especially considering that it shouldn't have been open in the first place…

The latter thought whirled around his sleepy mind for a moment, before its real meaning finally struck him. Dib's eyes flew wide open and he sat up abruptly, fingers flying off to find his glasses. Once they were in place before his eyes, he was finally able to spot the additional shadow perched at the bottom of his bed, patiently waiting to be noticed.

" _Zim_!" He exclaimed, barely managing to keep his voice quiet, shocked at the sight of the undisguised alien. Despite her newly protectiveness, Gaz wouldn't have hesitated to demolish him, if he had woken her up in the middle of the night. "What are you doing here? And how did you get in?!" The latter question was probably a stupid one. He had installed a security system, so that his computer would warn him of any unwanted intrusion, but the alien was good enough with technology to be able to hack it easily, no matter how hard he worked to perfect it. His rival had done it in the past, so he shouldn't be surprised to see that he had done it again.

He gulped slightly. The Irken usually stayed away from his house, unless he was planning some nasty trick against him. He should have understood that something was off, since the Invader had been avoiding him all day. He had seen him just in class, since his nemesis hadn't even bothered to make an appearance in the cafeteria and put on his usual show with the food he didn't eat. Was that the moment of the truth, perhaps? Would he finally understand the reason behind the other's weird behaviours? And was he about to face another threat to his life?

"Finally you've risen, Dib-human. I was starting to wonder if I had to wait all night," Zim stated with a small scoff, pushing himself off the bed and standing next to it, arms crossed. "Stop wasting Zim's time now. Hurry and get up. It's time to go."

Dib blinked, caught off guard for the umpteenth time. He had almost expected the alien to attack him or to try and force some weird device on him, while instead his rival was just impatiently tapping his foot on the floor, waiting for him to comply to his demand. He frowned. If the Invader was so stupid to think that he would obey without an explanation, he was very, very wrong. He wasn't going to willingly walk into what most likely was a trap.

"Why should I come with you in the middle of the night, uh?" He asked, a hint of wary hostility in his voice. "You can't just break into my room and order me around!"

"I am Zim, so I can command you, inferior creature, as much as I want. And you _will_ obey me!" The Irken shot back, his tone heating up. One of his PAK legs emerged from behind his back, causing the human to start, but instead of diving towards the teen, it picked up the trench coat that had been left hanging on a chair and threw it into his face. "Hurry up before I change my mind and just drag you against your will."

Dib eyed the alien once again, but, while his reluctance stayed, the animosity melted into a careful curiosity. "Can I at least ask where you're taking me?" He questioned as he kicked the blankets off, grabbing the dark coat with one hand and reaching out for his boots with the other. A bit of sarcasm entered his voice. "Or is it a too important secret for my _unworthy_ mind?"

Zim hesitated for a moment before replying, considering his options. "It's a…surprise," he eventually chose to say, in a final tone. He wouldn't further elaborate.

The human raised an eyebrow, fixing his glasses as he bent down to lace his boots. "A surprise?" He repeated, almost expecting to have heard it wrong. Apparently the odd behaviours were still an ongoing thing. His eyes flew to the Irken scale model that he had carefully sat on his desk, next to his computer screen. "Like…your gift?"

The Invader simply nodded, refusing to speak further of the subject. He had known since the start that this was a very stupid idea, but the impulse to follow through had been too strong to be fought back. He had tried to avoid his nemesis as much as possible at Skool, hoping that not catching the sight of him would be enough to allow him to change his mind, but it hadn't worked. So, once the instrumentation had been ready and the scanners regulated, he had broken into the human's house to pick him up. He had expected the protests, but luckily, for once, the worm child had chosen to cut them short. Perhaps he was catching up on the fact that he wasn't there to harm him, which was both good because it meant less wasted time, but it was also bad because it might push the other to exploit his peculiar situation.

"There, I'm ready," Dib announced, snapping him out of his thoughts, trench coat draped over his pyjamas. "Now, would you mind…?!"

He couldn't finish the question because Zim darted forward, his arms wrapping around the human's waist as his PAK legs emerged completely, lifting them both up and carrying them towards the window. They both made it out of it without banging their heads or any other limb against the walls, which was quite surprising considering that they weren't kid-sized anymore and that the teen had been trying to wrestle himself out of the alien's grip, once he had recovered from the initial shock. The Invader's grasp, however, was iron and much, much stronger than one could think looking at how thin he was. Another mystery of the Irken physiology.

"Zim, what the hell! Let me go!" He hissed as they jumped off the window, metal legs absorbing the impact with the ground perfectly. "What are you even doing?!" They never touched outside their physical fights or unless it was strictly necessary. The grip, even if it was far too tight to be comfortable, reminded him of a very unpleasant episode, which had happened a couple of years before, when he and the Irken had teamed up to get rid of Keef. First and last time they had ever considering doing something similar to hugging. Till that moment, apparently.

Once they had reached the ground, Zim unceremoniously dumped the thrashing human on the pavement, withdrawing his artificial limbs and stalking off towards the middle of the drive way. "You're really trying to make this difficult for Zim, aren't you?" He commented with a frown, but then he turned his attention in front of him, extending an arm as to touch something. A soft click was heard and suddenly his Voot Cruiser materialised in front of him, the glass that covered the cockpit lifting to allow entrance. "Hurry up, Dib-pig. Or I'll leave you here."

Dib let out a groan when his arse collided with the cement of the drive way, a curse and an insult on his lips, but when he looked up to spit them out at his nemesis and caught the sight of the spaceship, the words got stuck in his throat. Confusion exploded in his mind, as he tried to find an explanation to why the vehicle was there and to the fact that the Invader was standing next to it, almost as if he was waiting for him to get in before hopping in himself.

The teen frowned, unsure of what to think. There was an easy answer to all his current doubts, but it couldn't be the one. And yet, all seemed to suggest that Zim wanted to take him to space, which was simply ridiculous, unless the other was planning to maroon him on some inhospitable planet or toss him into a black hole. Could that be the evil plan the Irken had been working on in the last three days? Act nice so that he would willingly get in his ship and allow him to take him to his death? It didn't sound right, even as he thought it. Zim's plots were never this cunning. Besides, the other could have come up with some less elaborated way to achieve that, a way that didn't imply being forced to play nice with your mortal enemy and to humiliate yourself. The alien could have simply captured him while he slept, sedated him by putting something in his food, or anything along those lines. There was something more to all this.

Biting his lower lip in apprehension, he started to walk towards his nemesis, who looked like he was about to start screaming in frustration. He could understand his impatience. The longer they stayed there, the more likely it was that someone would catch the sight of both the alien and his ship, which would have meant exposing the Invader to the whole world. He was risking doing, all by himself, pretty much what Dib had been trying to do for years. That realisation was enough to persuade the human that there was no greater plan behind all that façade. His rival was many things, but he wasn't reckless. If there was something he had always succeeded in, it was to keep his real nature hidden. He would never risk ending up strapped on a lab operating table just to play a trick on him. It went against the Irken's clearly strong survival instinct.

"Alright, let's go," he nodded as he moved past the other to get in the Cruiser, no more hesitation making his steps faltering. He was pretty certain of his analysis, enough to make that hazard and to believe that there was no malicious intent behind that invitation.

He watched Zim carefully, amber eyes following his movements as the Invader gracefully jumped inside the spaceship and then pushed him aside to make space for himself in front of the piloting console. The cockpit was a bit too small for the both of them now, so Dib found himself pressed against the glass and had to struggle a bit to fit his legs comfortably. He tried without success to make his rival scoot at least a few inches away, so that he could stretch his crumpled limbs, and, in the end, he had to give up in front of the other's stubbornness, which left him with two choices. Either staying as squished as he was or start shoving hard. He didn't want to push his luck by upsetting the alien, so he went for the first option.

"Zim?" He called, cautiously as the spaceship started to raise towards the sky, almost soundlessly. "What's…" He hesitated. "Wrong" didn't seem the right word, even if it would fit, in the case the Irken was truly sick. However, he had a hard time labelling this nicer version of the Invader as something "wrong". Weird, out of place, but not wrong. "Uh, what's up with you lately?" He chose to reformulate, going for a more neutral question.

Zim didn't turn to look at him, but narrowed his eyes slightly. He had been expecting that question. The human was smart enough to figure out that, perhaps, for once he wasn't following one of his crazy plans. Not really at least. "That's what I want to find out," he simply answered, large magenta orbs fixed on the stars ahead of them.


	6. Chapter 6

Hello people!

So, I'm back with a new chapter. I took a bit longer this time, because as I said I was very busy, but hopefully the waiting will be worth it (you let me know!).

So, as I should have said in the notes of chapter 5 (did I?), this chapter is the continuation of the previous one (just as chapters 7, 8 and 9 will be a continuation of this two chapters) and we pick up almost right after our two boys have taken of for space. This chapter is completely Zim&Dib-centric, no other characters.  
I'm going to finally tell you what the heck is messing with Zim too (even if more "specific" details will be given in chapter 7). If someone was waiting for something super hard to fix or anything, uh, I'm afraid you'd be disappointed though. This whole anomaly thing is just a plot ploy to lead the story to the main focus of this first arc, meaning Zim discovering the truth about himself and his mission. Please, don't hate me!  
Also, if you haven't looked at my tags/warnings, perhaps you should because there's a reason why I tagged this story as ZaD-E-F- **R** (this chapter has pretty much all three...in a way xD).

And, alright, enough of me rambling. My usual but always more than heartfelt thanks to all the people who are reading this story! I'd love to hear what you think about it, and even if you'd think I should correct something. Constructive suggestions are as gold as support!  
A special thanks to who have taken the time to write their lovely comment! I'm glad you are enjoying the story enough to leave me a review!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encourage. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

Enjoy!

* * *

Space was as beautiful and fascinating as it was vast. Everything around the small spaceship was made of black void and shining spots. The planets of the solar system looked like captivating, colourful toys, which were, at the same time, close enough to touch and too far away to be accessible. The distances between each celestial body was interrupted here and there by asteroids and pieces coming from the planets themselves. Behind their shoulders, the sun shone, redder and brighter and more amazing than ever.

This wasn't Dib's first time among the stars, of course. He had been there a few more times already, battling on planets turned into giant space vessels or chasing Zim with Tak's ship. However, before that moment, he had never had a real chance to just observe the wonders that surrounded him. During his previous trips, he had been too caught up in what he was doing to let the awe wash over him as he finally immersed himself in the very thing he had always longed to do: exploring the universe and enjoying every moment of it. Now, without the task of piloting and with the ship travelling a very slow speed, compared to the ones he knew it could reach, he was free to press his hands and face against the glass of the cockpit and take in the view, mouth slightly agape in amazement and eyes shining with happiness. Endless questions filled his mind and he wanted nothing more than to address them to the alien sat next to him, but he knew better than to disturb him. His inquiries wouldn't have been welcomed in that moment.

Making a great effort, he turned his eyes away from the landscape and landed them on the Invader, who seemed completely uninterested in the view. Zim was bent over a computer screen on which Irken characters flew fast, eyebrow-less forehead creased in concentration. He was analysing data of some sort, or at least that was the human's guess. Since his rival had more or less admitted that they were on a quest to find out what was causing his weird behaviours, he had decided that it was safe to assume that all the weird technology that filled the rest of the Cruiser served the purpose of surveying the area, scanning it for anomalies or who-knows-what.

"Stop staring at the Mighty Zim, filthy pig. Your dull eyes disturb me," the Irken snapped without notice, his magenta eyes leaving the screen long enough to address him a deep glare. "Watch your precious space. That's why I brought you along. Not to disturb me." He went quiet for a split second, as if rethinking his words. "I shouldn't have brought you at all. Why are you even here?! I should dump you into empty space and get rid of you once and for all!"

Dib opened his mouth to point out that the alien had almost literally dragged him into his ship, but the words got stuck in his throat as he realised something. The Invader was sounding and acting once again like his usual self. "Zim," he said, taken aback by the sudden shift in the other's attitude. "You're annoyed with me. You dislike my company."

"Have you suddenly become completely stupid?" Zim growled, this time turning fully to face his nemesis. "Of course, I…" His voice died off, as he caught up with what the human had meant to say. His eyes widened even more and the rage that had been filling his expression disappeared, replaced by a pleased triumph. "Zim's back to normal!"

"Unfortunately," the teen grumbled rubbing the ear in which the alien had just shouted. He glanced outside. They were approaching Neptune. He took a moment to admire at the beautiful blue body of the planet, gaze lingering on the "Great Dark Spot" visible on that face of the celestial body. Then he moved his eyes back to his rival. "Whatever was affecting you now is far enough not to be able to influence you. We should turn around and head back towards the Earth, to see when the effects start showing up." He spoke the last sentence with a bit of reluctance, because in truth he would have really like spending some more time just watching the stars flowing by. However, he knew that it wouldn't be possible, not with the Irken back to his usual attitude. "Did your sensors pick up any abnormal readings?"

"I know that! You don't need to tell me what to do. I'm the one who've travelled the universe, not you. You're just a primitive, pathetic, ignorant Earth worm," Zim hissed, his face contracting in disgust once again, hands flying over the commands of the ship so that he could turn it around. "And of course I picked up something, Dib-human. I am Zim, what did you expect? I know exactly where this…thing comes from and what it is."

It wasn't exactly the truth. While he had indeed picked up a flow of _something_ coming from the area surrounding Venus, he was still unsure of its nature. From the readings, he could tell that it was some sort of radiation, but he would have to collect more data and feed them to his Computer at the base to get a more in-depth analysis.

"Oh, is that so?" The teen taunted, clearly not buying his confident statements. That was the kind of vague answers that the Invader usually gave when he was trying to cover up for his ignorance. They had been interacting long enough for him to be able to read most of the alien's behaviours. "And then tell me, what's messing with you?"

The Irken scoffed. "Why should I tell you? So that you can use it against Zim? _Never_!" He exclaimed loudly enough to cause the human to have to cover his ears again. He was starting to feel deeply ashamed and incredulous at his behaviour of the last three days. He had disgraced his title as an Invader in so many ways that it made him sick. The fact that he had temporary forgotten his mission was the least of the reasons why he should beat himself up. The first thing he would do once cured would be calling the Tallest, apologising for his misstep and explaining them what had been going on, of course underlining how he had defeated this invisible threat. Maybe they would be grateful, especially if it turned out to be something that might affect other Irkens in the future.

He put his hands on his narrow hips and raised his chin, hiding all those gloomy feelings and his growing embarrassment. "You won't trick Zim into giving away a potential weakness. Not that I have any, but just in case."

"You're really back being your obnoxious self. And I'm stuck with you in the smallest ship ever," Dib grumbled, unhappily. A part of him was glad that his nemesis was back being the jackass he had come to know, but he had to admit that he already missed the nicer Zim. They had been almost getting along and those three days had given him an idea of how things might have been between them if the Invader hadn't been so hellbent on destroying his planet and his race. He could have taught the Irken about Earth and human costumes, they could have done things that normal teenagers did. Zim could have told him about Irk and the other planets he had visited, showed him the universe. They could have been _friends_ , no matter how weird it felt thinking about it.

He shook his head. That was a very dangerous fantasy, one that he couldn't allow himself to consider. That was a scenery that could have happened in a parallel universe, but never in the one they were living in. Perhaps, somewhere in the space-continuum, there was a better reality where Irkens were explorers and not invaders, where humans were more open to accept the existence of other civilisations, where another Dib and another Zim might have formed an alliance to advantage both their people and might have enjoyed each other's company. It sounded like a very nice life, but it still wasn't his own.

"Dib," The Invader's voice broke his daydreams, perhaps for the best. The alien's tone was less harsh, but there was still plenty of tension in it. "That's it. The influence starts from this point."

The teen realised that the ship had stopped, more or less half way between Jupiter and where Mars would have been if they hadn't lost it during one of their craziest battles. He shot his nemesis a glance, reading reluctance in every inch of his body. The other didn't want to cross that border, because, as soon as he would, he would start to turn back into that more harmless, nicer version of himself and he couldn't really blame him.

"Hey, for what it's worth…I promise that I won't try to take advantage of your wea…altered state," he said, trying to sound reassuring and correcting himself before he could say anything related to "weak". Zim would have torn his eyes out if he had even just implied such a thing. Also, he knew that his rival had no reason to believe his words, but he had decided to try anyway. Damn, he himself had troubles believing that he had just said that and even more that he truly meant it. Still, it was the truth. Three years before, he wouldn't have hesitated exploiting all the openings that the Irken had offered in the last few days, but his current self hadn't even tried. Perhaps that would be prove enough of his goodwill.

Zim eyed him weirdly, as if he was trying to determine whether he was attempting to trick him or not. The human looked sincere, for what he could tell, but he was still wary of his promises. Earthen pigs couldn't be trusted, just as you couldn't really trust an Irken. However, he knew that, if he wanted answers, he would have to head towards the source of the radiations. He had no choice, even if it meant putting his reluctant trust in the teen. With one last, almost warning look, he reached out for the helm again, pushing the vehicle forward.

A small grin tugged the corner of Dib's lips when the ship started to move again, but he quickly hid it, not wanting to set the Invader off. He knew that his words hadn't been the main reason why the alien had chosen to continue, but he liked to think that they had had a role in the decision. After all, he was still there, still alive and awake, and not dead, harmed or knocked out in the back of the Cruiser. It had to mean something.

The next few minutes were spent in silence. Zim's eyes moved between the space in front of them and the screen of his computer, as he stubbornly did his best to avoid looking at Dib. The impulse grew stronger the further they proceeded, but he managed to fight it back, at least for the moment. He knew that, sooner or later, he would have to give into it. His PAK was already starting to send him mixed signals, unable to process the mostly unfamiliar emotions that were slowly starting to surface. It got worse when they flew past the Earth, towards Venus, the radiations and, consequently, their effects growing stronger as the approached their destination.

Dib, on his part, focused back on the landscape, trying to keep himself busy, but he couldn't prevent himself from shooting a glance in the alien's direction from time to time. He opened his mouth to make a comment twice, but in both cases he decided against it, seeing how apparently focused his rival was on what he was doing. He had even considered offering to take the helm so that the Irken could put all his attention on the sensors, deeming in the end that it was a bad idea. While the Invader might have accepted because he was under the effect of whatever space phenomenon was interfering with his biology, it would have surely enraged him even more once the whole thing would be solved.

The spaceship came to a new halt once they had reached Venus and Zim punched the autopilot in, so that the vehicle would automatically follow the orbit of the planet. The Irken then rested his back against the seat, magenta irises gazing hard at the computer screen. His posture was rigid, his arms crossed stiffly over his chest and his antennae were lowered against his skull, in a way that to his people would convey both nervousness and irritation. He was far too aware of the warmer, human body next to him and every effort of trying to ignore his rival was by now fruitless. Bringing the teen along had been one of the worst ideas he had ever had. And yet, he had been dazed enough by his own body chemicals to think that it would have been great to take the other in space and allow him to watch the stars and the planets while he worked.

Dib shot a couple of inquiring glances at the alien sitting rigidly next to him. He also tried to have a look at his screen, but he didn't know the other's native language well enough to figure out what the sequences of numbers and letters meant, so he eventually gave up. Still, the silence between them was becoming unbearable, mostly due to the fact that Zim seemed to become tenser and tenser as the time passed. He needed to do something to break it, to change that atmosphere before it exploded. Because, while the Invader was perfectly still, he could feel the nervous energy running through his body. It was as if the other was struggling to hold something back and it clearly wasn't working very well.

"The Earth looks beautiful from out here," he commented, saying the first thing that passed through his mind. He moved his head towards his home planet, which looked so small from where they were now and yet so full of life. He turned back to the alien, gathering the courage to ask a question he had been pondering for a while. "I…Uh, what does Irk look like?"

Zim shot the human the failed attempt at a nasty glare when he started to speak, but then instantly looked away, not trusting himself to keep his eyes on the other. The weird warm feeling he had felt the night before was back and he didn't know what to do with it. The question made him frown and for a moment he wondered if his nemesis was breaking his word about not wanting to take advantage of his condition, but he could hear only innocent curiosity in the other's voice. His face showed no sign of deceit either, so he decided that it could be safe to answer, if he didn't give too much information away. Besides, it had been a long time since the last time he had seen his home world. Since Operation Impending Doom I and his consequent assignment to Foodcourtia. While, as an Invader, he put his mission above everything else, he still missed it.

"If you are trying to get tactical information from Zim, know that you're wasting your time, worm child," he stated anyway as first thing, managing a stern tone. Then his eyes left the screen, moving them in the direction he knew his native galaxy was. "Irk is…quite different from that ball of dirt you call "home". Even from space…It's mostly all red or magenta, depending on the lighting," he started to answer then, after a moment of silence. His tone was distant, but his shoulders relaxed slightly. "It has rings around it, like your Saturn, only more numerous. The gravity is much higher than the Earth's and its atmosphere is thicker. The sky is pinkish instead of being blue as yours and our star is far less bright than your Sun. Not to mention that the planet itself is more far away from it. The only reason why Irk isn't extremely cold is because the atmosphere is thick enough to trap the heat."

His antennae perked up a bit more, shifting into a less rigid position as he paused for a moment, magenta orbs flicking down towards the screen before resuming their gazing into distance. "Most of the surface is covered by artificial buildings, and we have facilities almost everywhere under Irk's surface," he went on. His voice was oddly quiet for his standards and he was struggling hard to keep the melancholy he was feeling out of it. "The planet used to be mostly desert before our civilisation developed and we have shaped the buildings following the colour scheme and the forms of the Irken landscape. To an alien eye, the two things might even look merged together. There are still a few untouched areas of wildness, though, here and there. And several, artificially created gardens."

His gaze shifted back towards the human, his mouth curling in the shadow of a frown. He opened his mouth to rudely ask his rival if he was satisfied, but the words got trapped in his throat before he could speak them as soon as he noticed the pure awe spread all over the teen's face. Those amber eyes were staring right at him, hungry for more information, and it was safe to say that their owner was hanging on his every word.

Zim was caught off guard. He couldn't remember the last time someone had listened to him so attentively. Perhaps Skoodge when they still were training together underground, ages before. It was flattering for his ego, especially since all that interest and that wonder were coming from his sworn enemy. Pride swelled inside him. It was a victory that proved that the human, deep down, recognised the superiority of Irk, even under that point of view. On the other hand, however, that look did nothing but fuelling the warm feeling in his chest and he was having a harder and harder time to ignore it.

"It sounds really amazing," Dib admitted sincerely, once he had realised that the alien was done speaking. He had spent ten good seconds staring intensively, hoping to get more details, and now he felt embarrassed by the open display of enthusiasm he had offered. However, he hadn't been able to help it. The more the Irken spoke, the more fascination he had felt. Besides, there was something different in the alien's usually crazy, hard, cruel eyes, a deep but softer feeling. It made him want to ask him if he missed his home world, but he bit his tongue because he knew that Zim would have denied at least and snapped in the worst case.

" _Of course_ it's amazing, Dib-thing. It's _Irk_ ," the Invader scoffed, as if he was stating the most obvious fact in the universe. And to him it was. He was proud of being part of his people. The devotion to his race and its leaders was encoded in his PAK. "So showing awe is the _least_ you can do. Awe for the beauty, the advancement and the strength of Irk and fear for the _might_ of its Empire!"

The human rolled his eyes. There it came, his nemesis in full patriotic Invader mode. Apparently not even whatever phenomenon was interfering with the alien's behaviour and moods could affect that side of his personality. Pure Irken mindset, shared even by those who were anything but welcomed among the ranks of the Empire. Lust for conquest, a thing for destruction, love for intergalactic domination, a tendency for xenophobia and superiority complex. They were genetically engineered and artificially programmed to serve Irk and their leaders' every order.

"Don't you ever tire of repeating the same things over and over?" He asked, without really pondering his words. It was a stupid question, and a rhetorical one since he had no doubt on what the answer was. Zim would never tire to sing the praises of his people and to try to conquer Earth, just as Dib himself would never give up on defending it from any threat from outer space. However, he was starting to wonder if he would ever tire of listening to the Invader's rambling and silly plans. And if humans wouldn't just end up destroying themselves, making all the efforts, the sacrifices and the humiliations he had faced for their sake vain.

Zim's magenta eyes narrowed as they locked back on his rival. Dib's skin looked even paler, bathed in the light of the stars and of the planet they were orbiting around, and it stood out against the blackness of space and of the human's own hair. His amber orbs were looking outside the Cruiser again, but the Invader could clearly see them past the ever-present thick lenses. His nemesis was half propped against the glass of the cockpit, chin resting over the palm of his hand, long limbs awkwardly fitted in the too small space. His posture was more open than it had ever been around the Irken and his defences were lowered, even if not completely, making him vulnerable to the alien in a way the teen most likely couldn't even comprehend. It would have been so easy to crush him now, to spill his ruby red blood and choke his miserable, futile life out of him, to cut him open and let every star see what was hidden under the pale, thin skin. To subjugate him and mark him as _Zim's_.

The Invader's body moved before he himself could realise it. In a moment he had the human's back pressed firmly against the glass, a hand steadily planted in the middle of his chest to keep him there, and he was straddling him. His other three clawed fingers hovered near his nemesis's face, in a way that was almost threatening. His eyes were even more narrowed now and a dangerous, maniac smirk had opened on his face, showing his sharp, zipped teeth. The warmth in his chest had turned into a burning fire, spreading and making his green skin and antennae tingle.

"You don't think that this whole act is another of Zim's ingenious plans to destroy your planet," the Irken stated, tone smug and amused. It wasn't a question, he was pointing out the facts. "You think I can't harm you as I am now, you think I can't touch your planet. You're _wrong_. I still could, but I simply don't feel like it. And I'll even tell you a secret, Dib-human." His face inched closer to his rival's. "You aren't all wrong, for once. I'm taking a small break from my plans for Earth subjugation. Right now, Zim's focus is on conquering _you_."

Dib didn't have time to react when the alien jumped on him. One second before they had been talking more or less civilly and the next he had found himself with a lap full of Invader, those sharp claws too close to his flesh for comfort. He had no idea of what had triggered what he initially interpreted as an attack, since the alien had looked as calm as Zim could be till a moment before. He hadn't insulted the other or provoked him in any way, so the reaction he had got had been completely unexpected. He had struggled a bit at first, mostly by instinct, but that had only caused the Irken to shove him harder against the glass, so in the end he had decided that the best way not to be slaughtered was to be still and wait for an opening. The small area of the cockpit didn't give him much space to move and, if Zim had chosen to get his PAK legs out, it would have ended very badly for him.

As he waited for a way out, forcing himself to shift as little as possible despite his growing agitation, his brain finally caught up with what Zim was saying. The human's amber eyes, which had been darting around in the frantic search for something he could use to free himself, snapped back on the other's form, meeting the magenta orbs that were far, far too close for his liking. He distractedly realised that he could feel the alien's cooler breath on his skin, but his attention was too focused on the words tumbling out of his nemesis's mouth to make out the possible implications of the sudden lack of space between them.

Apparently, there had been no bigger plan behind the Invader's odd actions, aside from the influence of whatever space phenomenon they were studying. The knowledge somewhat eased the teen's mind, because it meant that he hadn't been playing along with a scheme that would have ended with the destruction of his planet. However, the small relief he felt disappeared as soon as he heard the alien's last statement, replaced by a mix of confusion and dread. The sentence was so ambiguous and had been spoken in such a confident tone that it could have meant anything, from a death threat to other interpretations his brain refused to consider. The creepy look on Zim's face didn't help him grasping what the other might be referring to.

"Zim, what the…" He started to say, half way between a protest and a plea, but he couldn't even finish formulating the question in his head because, as soon as his mouth started to shape the words, it was silenced by the Irken's lips smashing against his own.

Dib's eyes widened as much as it was physically possible and the back of his head collided violently against the glass, the pain brought by the hit soon joined by the stinging of his rival's claws sinking in the flesh of his chest. He struggled, moving his hands, which had been lying uselessly by his sides, on the alien's shoulders, trying to push him away. However, all he gained from the attempt was a sharp bite on his lower lips and the Invader's teeth cutting through it, drawing blood.

Zim let out a growl against the human's mouth, displeased with the resistance he was meeting, and exploited pained yelp that the teen let out in response to his bite to sneak his serpentine tongue past the other's lips, wrapping it around Dib's own and tearing a choked sound out of his nemesis. The human's saliva burnt him slightly, mostly due to the chemicals his body had absorbed after years and years of exposure to Earth pollutants, but the sensation wasn't unwelcome. Instead, it added a bit of a thrill to the whole action, just as the metallic taste of blood.

The Invader broke away only several minutes later, when the reduced intake of oxygen had caused Dib's struggling to grow weaker and weaker until it had ceased, a smug, accomplished expression on his face. His magenta eyes snapped open and he eased his claws out of where they had sunk past the human's skin, a low, satisfied purr escaping his throat. A part of him was deeply disgusted by the exchanged of fluids that had just taken place, even if it hadn't been as bad as he had anticipated, not that he would have ever admitted it, not even under torture. However, the way in which his rival had first fought back and then, finally, given in gifted him with a profound sense of victory, satiating both the weird warm feeling in his chest and his taste for conquer. If he had known that such an act would have worked so well to beat the other into submission, he would have tried it much sooner.

A relieved sound escaped Dib's abused mouth as he felt the right amount of air filling his lungs once again, allowing him to breathe properly. His head felt a bit light from the lack of oxygen and his lips were stinging harshly. He raised a shaky hand to them, wiping off the mixture of blood and saliva, and opened his eyes in turn. He hadn't even realised closing them. His mind was in a haze, trying to make sense of what had just happened, without really succeeding, and the expression of self-satisfaction on the Invader's face just made the irritation grow inside him. Why was the moron looking so smug? Did he even have an idea of what his actions meant, or at least of what they were _supposed_ to mean?

"What the fuck, Zim!" He exclaimed, too incredulous to express real anger, still panting slightly. His face was flushed, but he did his best to avoid acknowledging the fact. "What the hell was that?!"

The Irken raised a brow. "I conquered you," he stated without the slightest hint of hesitation, once again sounding like he was pointing out something obvious.

The teen let out an exasperated sound, throwing his hands in the air. "How…No, you didn't _conquer_ me. You _kissed_ me, you idiot!" He shot back, wondering if he would be wasting his breath on trying to explain the whole thing to an alien who had never really showed much interest in understanding the costumes of his race, if not superficially. "That's a…mating ritual. It has nothing to do with conquest. It express affection, not…whatever you were trying to convey through it." The whole ordeal was much more complicated than that, but he didn't even consider going in-depth with his explanation. It wouldn't help him making his point. However, a traitorous voice in his mind kept whispering that his rival had successfully managed to impose his dominance through the act, even if he probably had no idea of what he had been doing.

Zim crossed his arms over his chest, addressing the human a completely unimpressed look. "I know what "kissing" is, Dib-worm. I've seen filthy humans engaging in this disgusting activity plenty of times. Both at Skool and outside. And in those boring, stupid shows GIR watches when "Scary Monkey" isn't on. And I've done researches when Tak showed up the day of your Earthen pig-love holiday." He growled slightly as he pronounced the other Irken's name, the memories of how she had tried to steal _his_ planet making him clench his fists in anger. That hideous female. How had she dared to even think she could take over the Mighty Zim's mission? _Fool_. It was also true that she had almost succeeded and that he had been forced to team up with the Membrane siblings to defeat her, but those were mere details.

"So, I'm aware of your mating rituals," he concluded in a calmer tone, the hint of satisfaction coming back in his voice. "However, I also know that this "kissing" you do is hardly used to show _just_ affection. So, don't try to confuse me, worm child!" He yelled the latter sentence in the human's face, stabbing him with one of his claws. "Because Zim is no fool! I realised what I've been doing in these three days! I gave you gifts, I shared food with you and we watched movies. And tonight I've taken you to a place you like! So, I _conquered_ you. All you've left to do is submitting to ZIM!"

Dib was left gaping for a few seconds at the end of the alien's speech. He had to admit that perhaps, for once, he had underestimated the Irken's knowledge of Earth. It didn't happen often, but it was also true that the Invader had been on the planet for almost four years. He was fated to pick up things and, besides, even if the other's main focus remained on his destructive plans, he had often shown curiosity towards what he didn't understand. It was still weird to think that his rival was such an "expert", if that was the right word, when it came to _woo_ someone, but now that he thought about it, that was exactly what Zim had been doing, without either of them realising it. However, he was still persuaded that his nemesis was utterly confused, because the meaning of his actions, of the whole _courting_ thing, and his aim, "conquering" him, didn't fit together. Not in the way a human would interpret it, at least. On the other hand, he didn't know anything of Irkens' mating rituals, assuming that they had such things, and if they even know what "love" was.

Another thought, which hadn't come to him till then, hit him. Zim had _stolen_ his first kiss. His eyes widened slightly as a whole new kind of desperation washed over him. He had never put much importance in that kind of things, too busy chasing the paranormal and the alien himself to worry about girls and dates, but he was still a teenage boy and was well aware of what his peers expected from him. Losing your first kiss to a being from another world, a being was who your archenemy among the other things, at the same time pushed him to a new whole other level in the "freak" scale and sounded disquietingly _fitting_. After all, he had always chosen running after monsters over hanging out with humans and, as horrible as it could sound, aside from Gaz and his father, Zim had been the only stable person in his life.

"Zim, you just admitted that you had no idea of what you've been doing in these days till now," he pointed out, getting ready for another, endless discussion and trying to distract himself from his realisation. That wasn't the time to ponder those thoughts. They would be left for when he would be alone in his room.

Still, he couldn't help rubbing his still bleeding lip with his thumb. The kiss had been messy and the Invader, in his overzealous attempt to impose himself, had almost choked him with that weird tongue of his, which showed that the other was as inexperienced as he was, but it hadn't been _completely_ awful, if he discarded the disgust born by the fact that it had been _Zim_. The Irken's mouth tasted sweet, the flavour almost reminding him of the alien soda he had drunk the night before, and the Invader had put in the kiss the mad, one-minded concentration that characterised his schemes, which had made the whole experience incredibly _intense_.

"You _LIE_!" Zim screamed in rage, saving him from the weird turn his thoughts had started to take. "I always know what I'm doing, you filthy human pig!"

It took Dib a moment to realise what his rival was referring to, but once he did he couldn't help rubbing his temple in growing exasperation. "Calm down. I'm not trying to insult you. I'm just saying that this…thing affecting you is clearly not allowing you to think straight," he tried to explain once again, biting his tongue as he felt the need to laugh hysterically at the pun he had unintentionally made. Damn, his brain was as screwed up as the Invader's in that moment. He forced himself to focus on what he wanted to say. "You weren't planning to, uh, "conquer" me till now. Not in this way, at least. Just, the thing makes you act friendly to me and, since now we're closer to its source, the effects are more powerful, so you feel like wanting to act even… _friendlier_. That's why you had the impulse to kiss me."

Zim looked at him, suspiciously, for a moment, but then he offered a reluctant nod. The worm child had a point, as much as he hated to admit it. The warm feeling had grown stronger the more they approached the source of the radiations and that could have explained his sudden, shameful urges. His PAK had re-elaborated them at the best it could, fitting them in his mindset so that he could somehow comprehend them, and had turned them into a twisted will to invade and possess the human, just as he wanted to do with his planet.

The teen took the other's silent gesture of assent as an encouragement to go on. "You should just finish collecting the data you need, build up some kind of technology that shields you from this thing and then we go back to normal and never speak of this again," he finished, sounding slightly hopeful. It would be the best thing for them both. While he could have had a lot of fun humiliating the Invader for having actually _wooed_ him, that way he would constantly remind himself of the two of them making out and that was worse than the hug they had shared to make Keef explode. "Sounds good?"

"Yeah, Dib-human. Be honoured, because this time the Mighty Zim agrees with you," the Irken answered grudgingly after a moment, getting off the human's lap, where he had been sitting for the whole time of the conversation, and taking back his spot in front of the computer screen. He wasn't sure if his reluctance was due to having to agree with his rival or to the fact he had had to move away and give up on his plan of conquering the other. The thought that it might be the latter thing disturbed him, but he knew that it was a concrete possibility. He moved his focus on the data. "The material the sensors have collected on the anomaly is sufficient. We can head back to your stupid planet."

Dib merely nodded, not trusting himself to say anything else and risk starting another fight. Instead, he turned his eyes back to the view, wanting to take in as much as he could of it before they entered the Earthen atmosphere once again, and brought his knees to his chest. He hadn't noticed that Zim had stayed perched on him for the whole time until his rival had moved away and now it almost felt as if something was missing. He shook his head. Perhaps the anomaly, now that they were so close, was messing with his brain too.


	7. Chapter 7

Hello people!

I'm so sorry for the slight delay. I meant to post this chapter before the weekend, but I got super busy and I didn't manage to finish it in time! Next chapter will be posted within the end of this week and this is a promise I want to keep!  
Anyway, as I mentioned, this chapter is a continuation of the previous one and, finally, we're getting to the main event of the first arc. And I'm writing the Tallest once again (this time I remembered to mention it xD). I'm not even completely sure I'm doing them write, but gosh, I love writing them. They're so much fun! Opinions?

As per usual, I want to thank all my readers for their interest. You guys might be tired to hear me saying it, but it means the world to me! If you have thought or observation, please, let me know. I'd love to hear them!  
Also, a special, completely heartfelt thanks goes to a-witch-cat and "guestrev" for their reviews. Comments always make my days!

 **guestrev:** Since you don't have an account, I'm gonna reply to your review here. Sorry for the repetition, but thank you for your comment. Knowing that this isn't your usual kind of fanfic but that you're reading and reviewing it anyway means the world to me. I'm honestly flattered! I'm glad you're enjoying the story and the characterisation. The latter thing is something I really care for, so I try my best. And, well, yeah, I always end up rambling in author's notes, I guess it's because I try to...connect with my readers? Pretty much that. I'll try to tune it down though, if you think it's detrimental! As for the few reviews, I guess that a decent writing style isn't what really takes to catch people interest? Also, the M rate is meant for later parts, mostly references to violence and darker themes. So it will apply. Thanks again for your reviews! They mean a lot to me!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encourage. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

Enjoy!

* * *

The trip back to Zim's base was silent and much quicker than journey up to space, since this time the alien pushed the ship engines as much as it was advisable. Once again the Invader kept his eyes anywhere but on Dib and this time the human did the same. The residual awkwardness left behind by the kiss was still lingering between them and ignoring each other was the best way to avoid acknowledging it. Their eyes met again only once the teen was outside the weird house and he turned around to face the alien, feeling like he needed to say something before he left.

"Thanks for…uh, taking me to space. It's been nice. Aside from the…you know," he said, sounding and looking extremely uneasy, a slight stutter in his voice. He cleared his throat. "So, should I safely assume that the next time I'll see you, you'll be your usual space scum self?" Insults, good. That was familiar, safe territory.

Zim stared at him for a moment, as if he was studying him and pondering something in the depth of his twisted alien mind. "I will get rid of this stupid problem in no time. You are a fool if you doubt my amazing skills, Earth monkey," he spat out loudly in the end, but there was no real heat in his tone. Then he shifted his weight on his heels slightly and his voice grew quieter. "And you're welcome, Dib. _Never_ expect me to do such a thing again. Now, remove your annoying presence from my base. Zim has work to do."

The teen was surprised by the answer to his thanks, but he chose not to comment on it. After all, by now he knew that it was the anomaly speaking and they had shared already enough awkwardness for one night. He simply nodded, deciding that he felt satisfied with the reassurance, and turned on his heels. "Goodnight, Zim," he bid his rival, raising his arm in a half wave before sinking both his hands in the pockets of his trench coat and starting to walk away, as the door was slammed close behind his back.

Dib curled his shoulders towards his body a bit and quickened his steps. Morning was approaching, but the air was still cold and he was wearing just his pyjamas under his coat. He wanted to go back to his house and get some sleep, both because he was tired and because it was the best way to prevent himself from thinking. He wanted to do as he had suggested to the Irken, to just forget that night and everything that had happened in the previous days, but it wasn't so easy. He might have been able to, with a bit of effort, if the Invader hadn't kissed him, but that latter thing would be hard to remove from his mind, especially since it had been both traumatising and eye-opening, in a way.

He let out a quiet groan. Perhaps this sudden craziness was due to the fact that he had entered puberty and, while his mind was still adult and more mature than the one of his peers, his body was a hormonal mess demanding new experiences and presenting urges to him. Remembering the hot possessiveness he had spot in Zim's magenta orbs a moment before the kiss had happened was doing weird, intense things to him. In those moments he had been the only thing existing in the mind of a being who had travelled across the universe and lived for who knew how long. It was _flattering_ , even if the Invader had spoken in terms of conquest and submission as per usual. It didn't change the fact that he had, even if temporarily, taken the place of what his rival usually put above everything else. The place of his mission, of his orders, of his duty to the Tallest. It couldn't leave him untouched.

He tilted his head backwards slightly and looked up at the stars. It wasn't that he suddenly liked Zim. He still detested the space pest just as he had before that mess started, but he had seen glimpses of the alien's personality he didn't know that were there and it had caught his interest. He had never wanted to know the _person_ that the Irken was before, since he had seen in him nothing but a threat to Earth, till that moment. The Invader was fascinating because he was an alien, but for the rest he had been nothing but his enemy and the object of his hate. They had been reluctant allies a couple of times and Dib knew that, if they wanted, which happened rarely, they could work well together, but that had been just an aseptic fact in the teen's mind. Now, however, he had a vague idea of what it would mean being _friends_ with Zim, having him feeling something different from hatred and disgust for him. And feeling him himself something else other than the contempt and the unhealthy obsession he had for the alien. The knowledge opened doors to possibilities Dib wasn't sure he wanted to explore.

A determined expression formed on his face. He shouldn't be dwelling on those thoughts. They didn't matter. Soon enough Zim would be back to his usual self and would try to take over the planet again. They would slip back into their usual routine and everything would go back to normal. Perhaps then he would succeed in getting rid of those ridiculous airy ideas. Or at least that was what he hoped.

╔ IZ ╗

Zim didn't waste any time. Once Dib had left, he headed straight down to his lab and started feeding the Computer the data he had collected, asking for a complete analysis. It was obvious that the radiations hadn't always been there, so he supposed that they would be fated to disappear, sooner or later, but he couldn't afford to wait for them to disperse. Not after what had happened in the Voot Cruiser. That had been even worse than making a fool of himself in front of the Tallest. That madness had to stop before Monday came and he was forced to interact with his rival and the other humans once again. He would create an additional tool to install in his PAK, so that it could filter out the radiations and shield him from them. It wasn't the most orthodox of procedures, and it wasn't exactly legal either, but it was the most efficient and quickest solution he could think of in that moment.

As he waited for the results to show, he tapped his fingers on the side of the console, trying to soothe his impatience and to prevent his thoughts to wander back to what, in his mind, had already been labelled as the "Freaky Accident". He had _kissed_ a _human_. Not even when he had planned to exploit the girl who had later turned out to be Tak in disguise to gather information on human mating rituals he had been willing to go _that_ far. Not that the other Irken would have ever allowed such a thing anyway. And, while he had indeed felt a hint of morbid curiosity, watching the humans trying to eat off each other's faces in the corridors of Hi Skool, his main emotions towards the act had been pure, utter disgust. Could the radiations have messed him up so badly to push him to almost _enjoy_ the act? With _Dib_ of all people? Or there was something more behind the whole ordeal? Something that he had refused to consider till that moment? After all, he had assumed that the anomaly had made him produce chemicals, which had been the only responsible of his absurd behaviour. But what if the imbalance on his body chemistry had just brought out something that had been there in the first place, buried under his coding, conditioning and training?

He let out a disgruntled sound. He refused to even consider that possibility. It was simply ridiculous. He had more concrete problems to worry about. For example, if the news of the event reached anyone of his race, he would be disgraced. Both as an Invader and as an Irken. His people had discarded those primitive activities a long time ago, when they had started to produce smeets artificially and focused on nothing but building their Empire. It was unheard of an Irken taking part willingly and without any second aim in such activities. Especially with the member of an inferior race. With few to none exceptions.

The alien's frown deepened. There had been times in which an Invader's mission had required extreme, _unconventional_ methods of infiltration, but that was all it had been. A sacrifice made in the name of the Empire. After all, the Irken soldiers, Zim included, were trained to face any kind of alien things, from the most fearful to the most disgusting. The human kissing ritual definitely fell in the latter category. However, that still didn't excuse his actions since they had no real relevance for his task. Unless he seriously considered trying to "pursue" his rival, to use an Earthen expression, as a mean to get rid of him and, consequentially, of the main obstacle set between him and the conquest of the planet.

The Invader remained contemplative for a moment, pondering the idea carefully, but in the end he shook his head and made a face. It would have been a dumb strategy and it would have never worked. He could surely come up with more efficient, less humiliating and more reliable plans to rid himself of the annoying human. The mere fact that he had even considered such a thing showed how affected by the radiations he was. Once the device would have been ready and installed, everything would be clear once again in his mind. His goals, his plans, his priorities.

"Master, the analysis is completed," the Computer announced in that very moment, offering him a proper distraction from the uncomfortable subject on which his thoughts had landed. "Do you want to visualise them now?"

"Yes. On screen," the Irken ordered, pushing himself away from the console and taking a seat in his chair. A new series of numbers and letters started to flood before his eyes. His hypothesis of radiations interfering with his PAK was confirmed by the results shown. Some of the readings seemed to point out the presence of a thin plasma field around Venus which, together with the higher concentration of radiations, explained why his behaviour had become even more aberrant, unleashing feelings and instincts that should have been suppressed or removed.

Zim rubbed a gloved hand on the top of his head, thoughtful. He would have to go back to Venus to find out what exactly had caused such a phenomenon, once he would be shielded by its effects. Perhaps it had something to do with the latest geomagnetic storm. The Earthen star had already given him a few of problems in the past, interfering with some of his tools, even if minimally. Anyway, if he didn't find an explanation for the anomaly, he could have always blown up Venus, since the radiations seemed to be unable to disperse quickly because they had got stuck in the planet's thick atmosphere.

His fingers flew on the keyboard as he typed in the data for the device he intended to build. "Computer, run a simulation and highline any possible consequence of attaching this piece of equipment to the PAK's systems," he ordered once he was done, leaning back against his seat. "Feel free to adjust the parameters, to make it more efficient, if necessary. Also, I would like suggestions of what's the best spot to install it."

"While I'm touched by the fact that you're leaving me some initiative, master, may I remind you that the Control Brains don't tolerate any personal modification to the PAK assigned to each Irken individual?" The machine pointed out, voicing the thoughts that had crossed the Invader's own mind not much time before. "It's a bold move, sir. Even for you."

Zim shot the screen a slightly annoyed look. "I'm aware of this. It is a temporary solution until I inform the Tallest of the situation and of the precautions I was forced to take to deal with it," he answered, waving a hand. He didn't think that his leaders would have anything to say to him once he would have explained the reasons behind his actions to them. "At that point they'll be able to figure out an official solution and tell me what to do about this." He crossed his arms on his chest. "Now, please, that simulation."

The Computer hesitated, almost tempted to insist, but in the end it gave up. While its master was more open to hear it out in his current condition, he hadn't suddenly become less stubborn. Or less blind to what the truth of his condition was. Besides, the Irken had been able to survive an exile and an Existence Evaluation, after having caused the death of two Tallest and Horrible Painful Overload Day Part I _and_ II. Not to mention being the reason of the disastrous failure of Operation Impending Doom I. He would manage the consequences of his choices this time too.

"Programming simulation," it simply stated and a few moments after a new stream of data, together with a holographic representation of Zim's PAK, lid lifted so that the inner mechanisms would be visible. The new device was pinpointed with a red colouration, to make it stand out. "My calculations show that, if you build it small enough and set it on the external surface of the PAK, connecting it only to the main energy source, the chance of side effects is minimal to inexistent. I took the liberty of recalibrating the frequencies slightly."

The Invader nodded, satisfied. It was good enough. No, it was perfect, _ingenious_. Not that he had doubts. It was _his_ plan after all. "Very well, Computer. Let's get to work then," he stated pushing himself on his feet once again and grabbing the working goggles one of the mechanical arms was promptly offering to him, without him having to ask for them. "We have lots to do and I want to be done as soon as possible." He reached out for one of the portable communicators and switched it on. The image of his SIR Unit materialised on the small screen. "GIR, get down here in the lab. I need your assistance."

The robot went temporally in Duty Mode, yelling "Yes, sir!" before his eyes switched back to their original colour and he burst out into giggles. The sound continued even after the communication was cut off, growing louder as his sidekick approached the lab through one of the pipes, coming out at all speed from a panel in the ceiling and landing straight on the top of the alien, knocking them both on the ground.

Zim rolled his eyes and shoved GIR, who was still laughing happily, off him, before grabbing the robot by the arm. "Cease your antics, you stupid piece of metal. I need you to stay focused," he ordered, but he didn't kick or hit the other as he would have usually done. The fact that the impulse didn't even come to his mind frustrated him even more. "The work we have to accomplish is _vital_ for the mission. And for my sanity. Understood?!"

"Yes, master!" The SIR Unit claimed cheerfully, as he tried to poke the Irken's goggles, just to have his hand slapped away. The gesture, instead of upsetting him, caused a new wave of hilarity.

The Invader groaned softly, but kept dragging his crazy sidekick towards the worktable. The hours ahead of him would be very, very long.

╔ IZ ╗

The device was ready in a matter of four hours. The process would have taken less time if they hadn't been forced to work on very small components, so that its size could be reduced as much as possible, and if GIR hadn't spent half of the time playing with Zim's working tools. The robot kept handing him the wrong ones because he thought it was funny, forced him to say "please" every time he needed him to pass or do something and continuously moved the magnifying lens the alien was using to work.

The Irken was strongly tempted to send him away, worried that he might mess the whole procedure up, but the SIR Unit had started to cry every time he began to tell him to leave the lab, so he ended up making him stay until the device was ready. At this point, he told him that they had done a good job and that they should celebrate with some waffles. That, luckily, was enough to send GIR upstairs, screaming eagerly about pig-shaped sweets. He didn't want the crazy robot anywhere close to his PAK, once it would be open.

The next part made the Invader feel a bit nervous, starting from when he detached device from his back and opening it. He had to work quickly for obvious reasons and that alone was enough pressure, not to mention the fact that, despite being more than sure of his plan, the idea of putting his hands where only the Control Brains had authority to make modifications didn't sit completely well with him. For once, the Computer dutifully assisted him, without sarcastic comments or subtle insults, and they were down in less than two minutes.

Zim felt like he could breathe again once the PAK was back in its rightful place, attached to his body, and he relaxed a bit, taking a moment before giving the command to activate the newly installed component. The device on his back hummed, as its newest part connected with the rest, and the Invader felt a faint electrical shock running through his whole body, as the radiations started to be filtered out of him. His thoughts cleared, the uncontrollable impulses and weird emotions faded away slowly, together with the foreign energy accumulated in his body, leaving him only with the embarrassing memories of the last three days.

"I'll need tons of cleaning chalk to wash my mouth," was the first thing that came out of his lips, once the detox process was over, a grimace forming on his face. However, the disgusted expression didn't last much, since he decided that the best way to deal with what had happened was to pretend that it had never taken place, and was replaced by a triumphant one. "Tremble, filthy Earth pigs! The Mighty Zim is back and I will bring you to your _doom_!" He yelled, hands set firmly on his hips before letting his head fall back in a maniac, evil laugh.

The Computer watched him keeping the sound going for seven whole minutes, before faking a polite cough, deciding that it had enough. All considered, it already missed the nicer version of his master. He was creepy, but at least he was less random and even less moronic than the original one. "Sir, I believe that you'd like to inform the Tallest of what happened?" It suggested, not because it wanted to be helpful, but mostly because those transmissions were usually a laughter for everyone except from the shorter Irken. Not that it was surprising, since the fun was made at his expenses. Moreover, seeing him puffing his chest in pride and bathing in an appreciation that was never there, unable to notice the contempt that his leaders had for him, was much better than listening to him boasting.

"I know this! I don't need you to remind me, stupid bunch of circuits," the Invader rudely growled, even if the truth was that the thought had almost slipped his mind. "Hurry, contact them and stop wasting Zim's precious time. I bet they are eager to hear from me."

The machine let out a series of electrical noises, not even bothering to translate them into actual words and contradict the Irken's assumptions. _That_ would have been the real waste of time and, besides, it would have earned it just more insults. It was sure that, one day, Zim would realise the truth and at that point he would have regretted not having listened to it and to all the others who had tried to open his eyes, for different reasons.

╔ IZ ╗

 _On the Massive…_

Purple leant against the seatback of the couch in his and Red's private chambers, munching one handful of popcorn after the other. "You know, it's been a while since we have thrown someone out of an airlock," he commented out of the blue, a pensive expression appearing on his face. It disappeared as soon as he opened his mouth to refill it. "Why is that?"

His co-ruler didn't even look at him, keeping his ruby eyes locked on the screen in front of him. He almost missed what the other Tallest had said, as absorbed as he was in the videogame he was playing. He had asked Purple to join him, but his companion had seemed more interested in devouring both their rations of evening snacks. Not that it mattered. The level he was on was hard enough to be entertaining even without a gaming partner.

"We threw out that idiot who accidentally dumped your lunch, yesterday," he pointed out distractedly, bending his body as if it could somehow influence the position of his character on the screen. "It hasn't been _that_ long, Purple. And we can't keep throwing crewmembers out of the airlocks. Who'll run the ship, if there's no one left but us on it?"

"Still too long," the other grumbled under his breath, even if deep down he had to admit that his co-ruler had a point. "We should install a few hatcheries on board, so we can replace the ones we throw out or kill for any other reason."

This time Red removed his eyes from the game and shot him a look, as to make sure that the other was serious. Unfortunately, that appeared to be the case. "You have some weird, _idiotic_ ideas at time. Are you aware of that?" He commented, incredulous. "I'm not smacking you just because my hands are busy, but consider yourself punched."

Purple rolled his large orbs in annoyance, but he decided not to talk back. The fact that the other Tallest had gazed away from the screen to look at him, despite his evident focus on the match, meant that he was serious and that it wasn't a good idea to provoke him further. "Whatever, Red," he mumbled, shifting to make himself more comfortable in his seat. "You know what's never long enough instead? The time that passes between each of the calls Zim gives us."

Red's frowning mouth relaxed in a small grin for a moment. The Defective Invader was the first thing he and his co-ruler had bonded on, back when they were still training as Irken Elites. "The only acceptable time in-between those would be "never again". We'll achieve that, don't worry. As soon as we are finished with this quadrant of the Galaxy, we'll dump him once and for all."

"That's the only conversation with him I'll ever look forward to," Purple nodded, sounding extremely amused. He crunched a few more popcorns, before offering the paper bag to his companion. "How do you think he'll take it?" He asked after a moment of silence, looking speculative.

Red pressed the pause button and put the console down, turning his body to face the other Tallest fully as he reached out for the snacks. "What do you think? We are going to tell him that he's a _Defective_. A short, incompetent disgrace for our kind. That everyone hates him and that we've been playing him for years. That his mission was a lie, that he was never supposed to find a planet, that we didn't send him out to conquer Earth but to _die_ in space. And also that we moved up his Existence Evaluation with the Control Brains, in the hope that they would terminate him because, you know, that would be better for everyone. Oh, and we need to mention that he saved himself just because his PAK is _so_ faulty that it _infected_ the Control Brains with its madness." His tone turned crueller and crueller and more and more amused as he went on listing the facts. "He won't take it well. Even if at first he most likely won't believe us, that's a given."

Purple nodded, looking absolutely thrilled at the picture that his co-ruler was drawing out for him. "Yeah, because he's _that_ dumb. I mean, he actually thinks that we _like_ him. That we _value_ him." He scoffed. "How can anyone be _that_ blind? Arrogance is a well justified trait for our race, but Zim has no reason to be proud of himself. He's never achieved anything but failure in his meaningless existence. And he's super short too. Puh. A real waste of space."

"Don't worry, as soon as he'll realise that we're not joking it will hit him at full force. And it will _destroy_ him," Red finished, the shadow of his grin turning into a full evil smirk. "That will be more satisfying to see than the destruction of a thousand unworthy planets."

"Aw, Red, if only you were this good with words when you address the crowds too," Purple snickered, gaining a murderous glare from his companion, followed by an actual punch in the chest, which however only caused him to laugh harder and more openly.

Red let out a small growl at the ineffectiveness of his attack, but soon he joined the other Tallest's laughter, as both their thoughts turned to the look that would appear on Zim's face as soon as the truth would become manifest and undeniable to him. That would be a victory that would later deserve a huge party as a celebration. A national holiday for all Irkens even. After all, it wasn't every day that you got rid of the greatest menace, after the Meekrobs, that the Empire had ever faced.

They had been so engrossed in their exchange that none of them had noticed the blinking light on the main computer console, on the other side of the room, signalling an incoming transmission. Purple had silenced both the alarms and the channel that connected their room to the ship main chamber. The command could be overridden only in case of an emergency, which had assured the two rulers a bit of peace from the rest of the crew.

The technician who had tried to contact them to inform them of the call hadn't got an answer and had taken the silence as some form of assent, sending it through and opening a direct channel to Earth on the large screen behind their backs, just as Purple had started to ask Red about Zim's possible reaction to the truth.

The moment of silence that followed the ceasing of the two aliens' laughter was abruptly interrupted, together with the purple-eyed leader's movement to reach out for the game console, by a voice echoing in the room, an almost imperceptible shake in it, that made them both startle.

"My Tallest?"


	8. Chapter 8

Hi there!

As I promised, I was a bit quicker with this next chapter! Btw, if you'd rather me stop writing down my ramblings before each chapter, you guys can tell me. I won't get offended, I promise xD or you can simply ignore it. That works too ^^"

So, this chapter is pretty much all about Zim's reaction after accidentally finding out the truth. I always pictured that his reaction would be quite...extreme, if he ever learnt and especially understood the reality of his condition, without having a way to deny it. This is my take at it. Denial first, then anger and then depression, basically. You'll let me know what you think! Just, small warning, some bits get pretty dark.

Now. Thanks to all my readers for their interest. Knowing that some is actually reading and liking this work of mine is what keeps me going. I'd love to hear what you think of it too! Also, I want to thank once again the **guest user** who's keeping reviewing. I want to say again that your comments means a lot to me!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encourage. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

Enjoy!

* * *

It had all started with a toxic-waffles-flavoured accident, followed by a radioactive coincidence that had led to the current situation, which in turn was the fruit of said random mix of events. Zim's first impulse, when the transmission was accepted, had been to call out for his leaders, to make his presence known to them, since the two had their backs to the screen and had seemed unaware of the fact that he was there. However, before he could open his mouth, he had heard Purple asking out aloud, in a tone that sounded thoughtful: "How do you think he'll take it?"

That had been enough to make the shorter alien pause. He didn't know for sure what the subject that his Tallest were discussing was, but it sounded important. _Official_ even, despite the fact that the conversation was taking place in their private chambers, at least from what he could see. There was a part of him that, for reasons he didn't really care to explore, was insisting that he greeted them and stopped spying. However, on the other hand, he also had to admit that he was _curious_. A small voice in the back of his mind, perhaps his ego or maybe his instinct, the one that knew more than he did and that he refused to acknowledge, was whispering that they were talking about him. Perhaps they were organising some sort of celebration in his honour, for the devotion and the constancy he had shown during the years.

The idea made him swell with pride, and at the same time it appealed the side of him that was always looking for praises. He _had_ to listen, to find out what they were planning for him, to hear the words of admiration that they would never dare to speak in public, for the sake of appearances. Later on, when the Tallest would give him the news officially, he could have always pretended to be surprised, because he was pretty sure that eavesdropping on your leaders wasn't something you were supposed to do, even if you were the subject of their conversation.

So he had stayed quiet, waiting with enthusiastic eagerness for Red's answer to the question, ready to drink in every single word that would leave his mouth. And he had taken every one of them in when the taller Irken had started to talk, only that the sentences that his thin lips had shaped hadn't been praises or admissions of pride. They had been mockery, sounds shaped with disgust and rejection. Harsh, brutal _lies_ that claimed to be the truth. Delusions meant to undo what had been his reality since the day he had been hatched under the surface of Irk.

Zim remained frozen in his spot, unable to do anything but listening. He had given _everything_ to his people, to the Empire, to what the Irken civilisation believed in and represented. All his arrogance, all his pride were born from the awareness of being part of a race fated to dominate the whole universe, simply because they were amazing. And if they were so he had to be, and his past actions, at least from his point of view, had proven it. All the blood he had spilled, his own and of others, all the enthusiasm he had showed, all the devotion he had felt, the core of his very being, they were all for Irk and the mighty nation that had raised from under the rays of its pale star. And now, the same Empire for which he had shaped and given himself was calling him a _Defective_ , a menace, a bother that was better lost than gained. His death was being wished for by the two beings who incarnated and led the planet and the civilisation that had been all he had ever believed in, since the moment when his PAK had been attached to his back.

His first reaction was exactly the one that his Tallest had predicted: _denial_. His mind shut down for few, long moments, refusing the words he was hearing and the cruel delight with which they were being spoken. It had to be a _joke_ , there couldn't be any other explanation. His leaders had to know that he was there and they were playing him. So, he kept watching, hopeful and desperate, waiting for them to turn around and drop their act, to acknowledge him and invite him to laugh with them at their prank that, while cruel, was well staged and still nothing but a prank. A trick, a joke between beings that respected each other. Because that was their relationship, wasn't it? They had gone through a lot together, while training to become members of the Irken Elites. And, even if the other two would always been unreachable because their height had made them worth of becoming the rulers of the Empire, those shared times _had_ to mean something. He refused to think that they had hated him even back then, that _everyone_ had. It had to be a trick, one that he would be able to laugh at and forget later.

However, none of that happened. Red kept talking about the failure Zim was and Purple went on agreeing, looking thrilled and excited as he insulted him. The Invader waited, in vain, but in the end the doubts started to become too loud to be ignored. Was he really a Defective? He had been accused to be one already. Sizz-Lorr had implied such a thing, when he had come to drag him back to Foodcourtia a few years before, claiming that he was still registered as a Food Service Drone and that he had never been reinstated as an Invader. Tak had made a similar allusion at some point, trying to imply that the Tallest were just using him for their own amusement and that they would discard him as the broken toy he was, once they would have grown tired of him. And there had been that time he had managed to repair GIR, only to have the robot turning against him. He had believed that his sidekick had gone even crazier, but instead now he knew that the other had just recognised him for what he was and had consequentially tried to remove him.

Then there had been that one time that, perhaps, should have opened his eyes: his early Existence Evaluation. Back then, he had actually been accused of being a Defective, and everyone had seemed to believe it, but he had dismissed the episode because, in the end, the Control Brains had deemed him the "most incredible Irken ever". What a fool he had been, seeing only the parts of the event he was comfortable with and disregarding all the other, more relevant sides.

Those, though, had been just the most striking episodes. Then there were the smaller details that didn't properly fit. The two Planet Jackers saying that Earth wasn't part of their treaty with the Empire. The fact that the technology assigned to him was either faulty or outdated or both. His sudden assignment to Hobo 13, which might have ended up with him getting killed. All the useless, painful tasks that the Tallest assigned to him whenever he called them. Also, there was the fact that the Armada seemed to be always too far or too busy to come and exploit the openings he provided. And the innuendos. The ones that had escaped Purple's mouth plenty of times and that Red had always been too quick to cover up.

Small, scattered pieces that he had never been able to put together, or rather that he had never _wanted_ to put together, were now starting to show him a bigger, more complete picture. A dark scenario, one that tasted of exile, betrayal and rejection. His leaders' final laughter seemed to give the whole idea more concreteness, making it feel real and, especially, _final_ , even if they hadn't broken the news to him yet. It didn't matter, if it wasn't official. He knew that it was true and everything was over, his whole existence reduced to nothing but a senseless, cruel joke.

He reached out to close the transmission, but his fingers stopped before he could touch the button. If he had ended it now, before having talked to his Tallest, they might have found out that he had been eavesdropping and perhaps used such a knowledge to make his fate even worse, although he doubted that they would have managed to make him more miserable than he already felt. Nonetheless, he still knew that he needed to face them, no matter if he wasn't ready and if he would never be, now that all his delusions had been shattered. It had to be done.

He sucked in a breath, gathering the courage he no longer had, and tried his best to keep his voice steady, without completely succeeding, while shaping the two words that had been so natural to him till a few minutes before but that now felt heavy and wrong and pointless on his tongue. "My Tallest?"

He watched as his leaders jumped at the sound of his voice, clearly caught off guard. If this had happened before the revelation, he would have found it funny and he would have been forced to bite back a laugh. Now it was anything but and the time when he would have found such a scene amusing already seemed to belong to another lifetime. In a way it did, because his existence had just been torn into shreds and he had been shoved into a different, uglier reality.

"Zim!" Red exclaimed, recovering from his surprise before his co-ruler did. Whom was the idiot who had put the transmission through, without their explicit consent? He would find out and then Purple would have someone to throw out of an airlock. He would make sure that an example would be made out of the moron, so that anyone else would think about it twice before making the same mistake.

His eyes narrowed as studied the smaller Irken's stance. Unlike during their previous call, the Invader didn't look distracted this time, but his full attention was on them. However, he could see a hint of tension in the other's shoulders that usually wasn't there. He almost looked _nervous_. How much had he heard of their previous conversation? "How long have you been there?"

"I've just been put through, my Tallest," Zim lied, the words slipping from his mouth easily, as they had never done. Even if he refused to admit it, he knew that he wasn't always the most skilled liar. However, something seemed to have switched inside him, making his blood rush more quickly and his PAK work more intensely. Survival instinct, perhaps, or maybe just his mind trying to work out where he stood now. "I wanted to inform you that I solved the issue that led to the conversation that never happened. There was a space anomaly interfering with my PAK and, so, conditioning my behaviour. It's all taken care of." He realised that he hadn't sounded anywhere as smug as he normally would and he forced himself to puff out his chest, resting his fists on his hips. "I'll send you a complete report with the description of how I _brilliantly_ fix the situation as soon as my next _amazing_ plan for Earth conquest will be set in motion!" Much better.

Those words and the self-praising felt so _empty_ now, but his leaders seemed to buy the act. Red relaxed, wrapping an arm around the back of the couch, and Purple bit his lips in a clear attempt to hold back a mocking laugh. The Invader narrowed his eyes slightly. Now it was all so _evident_. The small movements, the sparks in their eyes, the glances they exchanged. How had he missed all this? Perhaps he was really as blind and dumb as he had been accused of being.

"We're glad to hear it," Purple stated, shifting towards his companion and elbowing him slightly from behind the seatback. For a moment, he had really believed that Zim had heard them plotting his demise. Not that he gave a damn about hurting the shorter Irken's feelings or that he feared some sort of retaliation. He couldn't have cared less and the other was so incompetent that he wouldn't have been able to get back at them even if he had wanted to. However, he had all the intentions of carefully planning the conversation that would lead to the Invader's final demise, so that it was as destructive and hurtful as possible. It would have been a shame having to give that up. "Now, we're sorry but we have something very important to discuss. You can fit whatever else you need to say in your report." He waved a hand, dismissively. "Call us another time."

Zim's magenta orbs darted for a moment towards the screen set behind his leaders, where the game was still on pause. ' _Very important things to discuss my ass_.' The thought popped up in his mind almost against his will, the human expression conveying perfectly the rage that was starting to build inside his chest. He had better close the transmission quickly. "Of course, my Tallest," he complied, with a quick bow, struggling against the growing part of himself that refused to show any kind of respect. "I will get back to you as soon as possible."

He didn't wait for them to answer, not expecting more than another dismissive wave as a goodbye, and closed the communication. He then remained there, staring at the black screen, fists clenched by his sides. He could picture them easily, laughing and mocking him once again, now that he couldn't see them anymore. And after that, in a few minutes, they would go back to their games and snacks and forget completely about him.

His anger exploded without a warning and he threw his head back, letting out a loud, booming roar. He could hear Red's voice taunting him, filled with disgusted amusement. _Defective. Menace. Incompetent. Disgrace._ They had sent him in space to _die_. They had _lied_ to him, played him, turned him into the target of their deepest despise and mockery, since the very start. They had made a fool of him in front of their people, the example of everything that an Irken Invader should _not_ be. The voice in head shifted at that point, changing and sounding like almost any other person he had met in his life. Purple, his fellow Invaders, his former training companions, Sizz-Lorr, Tak, his own Computer, Dib, Gaz, the human children and teens at Skool. _Idiot. Moron. Freak. Crazy. Short. Alien scum. Dumb. Useless waste of space. Ridiculous fool. Fraud. Unworthy thing._

His fists collided with the console, hard enough to send sparkles of electricity flying all around it. The hit surely had to have hurt him, but he didn't feel any physical pain. He was too wounded in his core, too furious and humiliated, too incredulous to notice anything that weren't the violent emotions tearing him apart from the inside. His PAK hissed loudly and the spider legs emerged, quick and lethal, joining his hands and feet in what soon turned out to be a storm of destruction unleashed on everything he could reach. He didn't care about the fact that he was demolishing his own laboratory, he couldn't have stopped even if he had wanted to. He had to get it all out. The lies, the burn of the betrayal, the desperation and the bottomless sense of loss. He had to get it out before it drove him completely crazy.

No one dared to even try to stop him. The Computer remained perfectly silent, terrorised that the Irken would have turned his rage on its central core and destroyed it as he was doing with the lab terminals if it had provoked him. Even GIR, who had rushed downstairs at the sound of the horrible scream Zim had let out, remained still on the elevator doorstep, metal hands pressed against his mouth, teal eyes wide. He had seen his master angry many times, at him too, to the point that he had beaten him up, but the uncontrollable rampage currently taking place before him was on a whole other level. There wasn't just blind fury in it, there was also a profound hurt in every blow. The robot knew that the Invader wouldn't have hesitated to reduce him into broken pieces of metal if he had tried to step in. So, the two machines just stood as quiet witnesses of that explosion of violence, waiting for it to come to an end.

"How have they dared to play Zim! Filthy, cowardly backstabbers!" Zim cried out, finishing to smash yet another piece of his equipment. His clawed hands gripped at his antennae, pulling them harshly. "They lied to me, this whole time! They plotted my death! My _annihilation_! For the _greater good_ of Irk! _LIES!_ Dirty, empty _lies_! I'm _not_ a Defective! I'm an Irken Invader! I'm a proud, worthy soldier! I am…I am _ZIM_!"

With the last word, he suddenly deflated, all his angry energy disappearing. His legs gave out and he fell on his knees, in the middle of the destroyed lab, his PAK limbs folding back inside the device with a soft click. Everything in his body hurt, his torn, dirty uniform hiding the bruises and the most likely broke bones. There was pink blood slowly dripping from a cut on the side of his face and his antennae were pressed flat against his skull, aching in turn for having been tugged hard and abused.

However, the physical pain was nothing compared to the intensity of the lack of feelings that the now dissipated rage had left inside him. He felt drained and _empty_ , completely devoid of any kind of sentiment. His thoughts buzzed, randomly shifting from one idea to another, too dazed to put any of them into focus. The taunting voices had faded away too, leaving behind just a silent echo that did nothing but accentuating the void in his chest. He felt nothing at all. And now, stripped of his rank and mission, rejected by his own race, confined in exile on a planet he hated with passion, he _was_ nothing. A meaningless waste of space, just as Purple had said.

Slowly, he lowered himself on the floor, rolling on his back and fixing his eyes on the ceiling. The feeling of his PAK pressed between the ground and his back, arching his spine, seemed like a cruel joke, a mocking reminder of what he had never been allowed to be. He was an error that shouldn't have survived this long, whose fate could be only to be discarded and forgotten. He had no reason to exist, since he shouldn't have been created in the first place. Everything he was, every inch of his being and of his coding was faulty, dangerous, _diseased_.

He couldn't tell for how long he laid there, motionless on the cold floor. Minutes, hours, days. Time was meaningless, as everything else. There were tears falling from his eyes, wetting his skin and the top of his uniform. He had never allowed himself to cry before, not even as a smeet. It was a show of weakness in which no proper Irken should indulge, no matter the circumstances, especially if they were an Invader. No good soldier should let their emotions rule over them, overwhelm them so completely and tear them apart. However, now he was none of that anymore, so there was no reason to hold back the hot tears. He was just an exile abandoned in a hostile universe, a stateless being who didn't belong anywhere. He didn't have a planet to go back to or a path to follow. A mission to give some sense to his life. Not anymore.

His mind struggled to wrap around the meaning of it all. The first thing that came too his mind was that, if he had simply laid there and died, no one would have noticed. The Empire would have gone on prospering and conquering and of him not even the shadow of a memory would have remained. His ID would have been deleted from the newly bred Irkens' PAKs, effectively cancelling him from the history of his people. Earth would have kept turning and humans would have gone on leading their pathetic existences up to their destruction, mattering much more in the cosmic entirety than he had ever had. Perhaps the only one who would have noticed his disappearance would have been Dib. However, his rival would have forgotten him too in the end and he would have gone back watching the stars and chasing his ghosts, with no recollection of the alien who had proven him right for the first time, even if the world had refused to believe him. He would have faded away, as a bad stain, until nothing had been left of him, anywhere.

"Master?"

GIR's voice broke the slow, gloomy floating of his thoughts, making him open the eyes he didn't remember closing. The robot was standing next to him, leaning forward just slightly so that his head could fully be in Zim's field of view. One of his hand was still near his mouth and the expression on his face was the saddest the Irken had ever seen.

"Master, are you hurt?" The SIR Unit asked again, seeing that he had got no reaction. There was a hint of sincere concern in his voice. He shifted a bit more forward, his legs touching the Invader's limp arm. "You look so _sad_! I don't like you like this. I can make you more fluffy waffles. Without soap this time. Will that make you happy again, master? I can help you fix the lab too. It's all broken and dirty now. We can make it all shiny again!"

"Leave me alone, GIR. I don't want to do anything now. The mission, my life…It's all over," Zim answered after a moment, his voice quiet as it had never been before. "Nothing makes sense anymore. Just leave me here to rot. I don't care. No one cares about Zim anyway."

"That's not true! I _dooo_!" The robot protested, jumping on his spot. He was getting more and more worried. The last time he had seen his master in a similar state had been when the Big-Head Boy had stopped chasing him, but at least back then the Irken had pretended to be still interested in his task, even if he hadn't really tried to pursue it. Now, instead, he was openly admitting that there was no mission, not anymore. And the _emptiness_ in his voice, the lack of any kind of energy, it was scaring him more than the rage that had devastated the lab. "And if the mission is over we can do something else. We can watch the Monkey show and the movies and bake things and go into space and do weird experiments and kick Mary's ass and get lost in the city and play videogames and eat sammiches and go shopping for piggies and pilot planets and go to the luna park thingy and throw ice cream at the mean humans and blow things up and…"

He went on listing completely random activities in the attempt of somehow sparking the Irken's interest, but without much success. Zim didn't even bother to look at him, his mind locked on the first thing the SIR Unit had said. Apparently the only one who gave a damn about his existence was a robot that was just as faulty as he was. It made sense, in a disturbing way, since they were the same, under that point of view. The difference was that GIR didn't seem to be disturbed by his status as a Defective. He thrived in it, enjoying every second of his unstable mind and overenthusiastic attitude. Whether it was because he was too insane to be really aware of his condition or because he simply didn't care, the Irken found that, for the first time in his life, he _envied_ the weird, crazy machine. GIR was far more independent than he was, than he had ever been, only that the alien had never realised it until that moment.

Slowly, he pushed himself up in a seated position, ignoring the pain flaring up his arms as he rested part of his weight on them. His movements cut off the robot's monologue, but he didn't look at him directly, even if with the corner of his eyes he could see the almost frantic expression on his sidekick's face turning into a more hopeful one. He had no idea of what he would do now. The thought of staying on Earth didn't appeal him at all, but it was probably the safest option. Going back to any planet within the borders of the Empire, or even too close to them, would have meant being sentenced to death. He had the feeling that this time Red and Purple wouldn't involve the Control Brains, considering how it had ended the last time they had tried to get rid of him through the most standard channels. However, wasn't his banishment an even worse punishment than death itself? At least, once dead, he wouldn't have been able to feel the humiliation and the emotional pain that were wrecking him now, brought by the awareness that he didn't belong and that his identity was nothing but a genetic error of programming.

His eyelids slid closed once again. He could have returned to Foodcourtia, taken his place back at Sizz-Lorr's restaurant. He had loathed that place, perhaps even more than he hated Earth, but at least there he would have had a task, a rank, a job that could define whom he was. He would have never been an Invader again, he would have been forced to give up on everything he had built for himself, including his ego, but at least he would have still been part of the Irken society. Assuming that the frylord wouldn't turn him in. Otherwise, he could have always taken his ship and headed even further away from his home world. Find another galaxy, a deserted planet, or even just keep going until there was nothing left of him, just as the Tallest had wanted in the first place. Or he could have stayed where he was, among the humans, until he figured out what to do.

He blinked his eyes open, as the thought of Earth broke into his mind once again, even after he had almost discarded it. Perhaps it wasn't such a horrible idea. He already had a place on the planet, he had already infiltrated himself deep enough among its filthy inhabitants. He could temporise there, going on as he had in last few years, living the lie, until his leaders decided to break the news to him. Then he would see what would happen, whether he would be given the choice of what to do with himself or if a particular fate would be chosen for him.

"Help me up, GIR," he ordered, voice flat, finally turning to look at the robot. His PAK was slowly repairing the damage he had done during his rampage, but it would take it at least another hour to heal him completely.

For a moment, the thought that the Tallest could turn off the device, effectively killing him in ten mere minutes, hit him, making a shiver run down his spine, but then he remembered the only useful trait of being a Defective. The Control Brains couldn't control his faulty PAK, so they couldn't have harmed him unless he had given himself up. He doubted that Red and Purple would have bothered to hunt him down, considering that their deepest desire was to be rid of him completely. Most likely, in their mind, not even having the pleasure to kill him was worth being forced to suffer his company in person one more time.

Despite the protests of his body, he didn't make a sound when the robot grabbed him, complying to the order he had been given, and lifted him to his feet. The SIR Unit's expression had fallen a bit, but the other clearly hadn't given up on his attempts to cheer him and offered him a large, slightly insane grin once he saw him standing. He seemed to be vibrating with renewed energy, now that the alien had finally acknowledged him properly.

Zim shot him a glare, but there was no real heat in his eyes, and allowed GIR to drag him to the elevator, resting most of his weight on his overenthusiastic sidekick. At least, perhaps for the first time in his life, the machine was being truly careful of his actions, doing his best, even if not always succeeding, not to harm him even more. He still kept bumping in the Irken's bruised sides and aching arms, and accidentally tripping his weak legs, but not as much as he normally would. Somehow, even the robot had to have grasped how severe the situation was.

"I might as well eat one of your waffles," Zim mumbled quietly once inside the elevator, picking at a patch of his torn uniform. He narrowed his eyes then, trying to convey as much seriousness as he could. The last thing he needed was having to deal with food poisoning again. "But _no_ chemicals. Agreed?"

"Yes sir!" GIR exclaimed, standing at attention for a moment, even if the whole effect was ruined by the giggles escaping the robot's mouth. "The waffles and I will make you better! And piggy and the couch too! And then I'll make you a sammich too! Just wait and see!"

The Irken let out a small scoff. If only it could be that simple. Nothing could fix the situation, it was broken beyond repair. He had gone past the point of no return in the same moment when the faulty PAK had been attached to his back for the first time. What was now left for him to do was deciding what he should do about his status. However, for the moment, he could let his sidekick try whatever he thought would "make him better". Everything else could wait. He had time. After all, it wasn't like he had anything else left to do.


	9. Chapter 9

Hello people!

I'm back with another chapter! So, we're starting to see the consequences of the revelation on Zim's thoughts and behaviour. I'll warn you: from now on, expect a lot of randomness from him because he will keep switching from the apathy and dark emotions he showed in the previous chapter and moments where he thinks far too lucidly for everyone's good (his included). And of course, Dib gets caught in the crossfire every single time xD Not that it could be any other way. Also, in this chapter I'm laying the foundations for the new interactions between Zim and Gaz, which will become sort of important later on!

Once again, I offer my thanks to all the people who read and favorite this story of mine. I love seeing the number of faves going up. It means that someone is actually liking my work xD Please, if you have any comment or observation to make, feel free to let me know! I'd love to hear your opinion!  
And of course, I'll never stop telling my reviewers how much love them! Thanks for taking the time to leave me your thoughts!

 _ **guestrev** : I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter and Zim's reaction! Also, it'd be great if you could point out those errors. I try my best not to make them, but I guess that I'm bounded to make some mistakes, not being a native speaker and all. But I'm glad to hear that I manage pretty fine anyway ^^ It's reassuring to hear!_

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encourage. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

Enjoy!

* * *

Dib's eyes wandered on the other side of the classroom, towards the empty desk. Zim had already missed two school days and he hadn't seen any trace of the alien since they had come back from their trip in space, the night between Friday and Saturday. It was Wednesday morning, almost at the end of the second hour of lesson and the Invader had yet to make an appearance.

Even if he was reluctant to admit it, the teen was starting to get worried, for two very different reasons. On one hand, the Irken's absence could mean that his rival might be working on some new crazy plan that could have endangered the whole planet. On the other, however, it might as well be that Zim's condition had turned out to be more severe than a change in his behaviour. The alien could be actually _sick_ and that was the reason why he hadn't set a foot out of his base. The teen knew that he should be hoping that it was the second option, because it meant both that Earth wasn't in danger and that his nemesis was incapacitated, but he found no real comfort in the idea.

A heavy sigh escaped his lips as he turned his gaze towards the blackboard, where the math teacher was scribbling down an equation. He didn't have any idea of what the subject of the lesson was, he hadn't been paying attention almost at all. His thoughts had stayed mostly fixed on a certain green, loud nuisance since when he had woken up. He could almost hear Gaz's voice whispering "obsession" in his ear, with that incredibly creepy tone that only his sister seemed to be able to master. He rolled his eyes. There was only one thing to do, to get rid of his doubts. After the end of the lessons, he would go to his rival's base and check on the other. Just to be safe, whatever was the reason why the Invader was keeping his distances from the outside world.

The bell rang less than ten minutes later and, for once, he was the first to leave the class, instead of lingering backwards as he usually did, waiting for the rest of the students to leave. He was feeling restless and he wanted to use the break to get rid of some of that nervous energy, because otherwise he wouldn't have been able to sit through his next lesson. A small groan escaped his lips. He couldn't wait for lunch break to come, so that he could at least talk to Gaz, even if she wouldn't really listen to him.

"Hey, Membrane!" A familiar, unwelcome voice called from behind his shoulders, interrupting his thoughts abruptly.

Dib tensed at the sound of it, recognising it immediately, but pretended not to have heard his name being called and quickened his steps. As a kid, he had thought that being bullied and mocked was awful. The other children always talked ill of him, calling him "insane" and "freak", and pushed him around. In a couple of occasions, he had even been thrown a punch or a kick. However, the only real injuries he used to get, back then, were the ones from his fights with Zim, while the worst he would gain from the kids at Skool were a few scratches and bruises that healed in a couple of days at most.

Starting his life in Hi Skool had given his experience with bullying a whole new meaning. The bullies were stronger, crueller, harsher and way more violent. Thanks to Gaz standing up for him, the attacks were nowhere near as frequent as they could have been, but every time they left him aching for days and days. Even when they didn't consist in straight out beating him up, the consequences were never as quick to fade away as they used to be. His head had been shoved in a toilet a couple of times and, after each accident, he had avoided the Skool bathrooms as the plague for a whole week. Then there had been the times when his properties had been damaged. Books torn apart, locker vandalized or broken, phone crushed, money stolen. And the words. The insults, the name calling. It had got worse, the malice with which it was done had deepened. He was used to them, but, while they usually didn't reach deep enough to touch him, at times they struck too close to home or caught him unprepared. They hurt, in that case, much more than the punches.

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder, forcing him to an abrupt stop. He had hoped that, if he had ignored him, the bully would have simply given up his pursue, but he had been consciously deluding himself. Biting back a shaky sigh and sucking in a breath through his nose, he turned around to face the other boy. He wasn't much taller than him, just a couple of inches, but he was thick and sturdy where Dib was thin and much skinnier. Those were the moments when he hated the fact that sports had never been his thing.

"Membrane, didn't you hear me calling for you? Are you blind _and_ deaf?" The bully asked, voice similar to a growl, while the two teens who always accompanied him smirked from their spots a step away from the two of them.

"No, I didn't hear you, Louis. I was lost in my thoughts," the scythe-haired boy answered, trying to hide how nervous he was and fighting the impulse to take a step back. The other looked pissed and Dib knew that the expression meant that nothing, aside from a miracle or Gaz, would save him from the session of beating that was about to fall upon him. Which meant that he would have to suffer through it. H wasn't very hopeful for someone or something to come to his rescue. After all, he wasn't exactly the luckiest person on the planet. Quite the contrary. "What do you want?"

"What do I want?" Louis scoffed, shooting a look at his companions, who shook their heads disapprovingly. "You always have your head in the clouds, weirdo, and that was bound to put you in troubles. And it's happening _now_." He leant forward, his stance clearly threatening now. "You little shit were supposed to do my math and science homework, but you didn't and for that I got a bad mark and a demerit. You can imagine how unhappy I am about it."

Dib's eyes darted across the corridor. There weren't many students passing by and the few who noticed them simply went their way, not wanting to get involved, as per usual. He was on his own once again, as he had been for most of his life.

"I never agreed to do your homework," he protested, even if he knew that it would just anger the other guy more. However, since he was going to get beaten up anyway, he might as well at least try to put up a bit of a fight, just not to make things too easy for the bastard. Now that the bully had mentioned it, he remembered the other demanding such a thing from him the previous week, but he had brushed the whole episode off, also because his sister had been there, so Louis hadn't been able to try anything. "Leave me alone. If you suck so much at school, well, it's all your fault. I can't change the fact that you're a brainless idiot."

As he had expected, the other's eyes flashed with fury at his words. "You're feeling a little feisty today, aren't you, crazy boy? Well, then perhaps it's time that I remind you of where your place is." He reached out for Dib and shoved him hard enough to send him on the floor. "There, on the ground, with the other trash!"

The teen felt his balance being affected when the bully's hard hands landed on his chest and he couldn't stop himself from stumbling and falling, even if he managed to cushion the fall a bit. However, he wasn't given any time to react because, suddenly, the other two boys had grabbed him by the arms, pulling him up on his feet and holding him still, body exposed in front of Louis. He struggled, trying to break away from their grip, but it mostly was useless.

The bully cracked his knuckles and raised a fist. "So, are you ready to pay the price for your distraction, nerdy scum?"

Dib had to use a good amount of self-control not to close his eyes at the imminent hit. He wasn't going to give those jerks the satisfaction of seeing him scared, even if he was. He would take the blows and try not to break, no matter how hard they could hit him. After all, he spent most of his days fighting an alien menace. They couldn't hurt him more than his nemesis did during their most heated battles.

He gulped, his eyes locking on the hand aiming for his stomach, muscles tightening reflexively to shield him, at least in part, from the impact. However, before Louis's fist could descend on him, a new voice called out from their left, stopping the bully mid gesture: "Release him in this instant, you filthy bag of smelly pig-meat!"

Dib's head shot in the direction of the sound with a jerky movement, eyes widening in surprise. Even if he hadn't recognised the voice, the peculiar insult would have given away whom it belonged to. Zim was standing a few feet away from them, disguise in place and body tense, ready to fight. He looked the same, with his green skin and his Invader uniform, but the teen couldn't help noticing that something was off about him. His expression was dark, his shoulders were slumped and he didn't walk with the usual flaunted confidence. His fake violet irises were burning, but at the same time they looked distant, empty, as if he wasn't really in there.

"Did you just call me a stinky pig, freak?" Louis exclaimed, incredulous and clearly caught off guard. That had to be the first time he was interrupted during one of his assaults and he looked like he didn't know how to deal with it. No one before that moment had been brave or stupid enough to dare stepping in between him and his chosen victim.

"Zim gave you an order, worthless Earth worm. Release the Dib," the Irken repeated, his voice cold and calm in a way that was so very different from his usual attitude. "You will regret it, if you don't do as I say."

The bully and his companions exchanged a glance before bursting out into laughter, finally recovering from their surprise. The scythe-haired boy could understand their incredulity. The alien was much shorter than them all, he was skinnier than he himself was and, in his disguise, he didn't look scary at all for human standards. Underestimating him was an error that most people did and they always ended up paying dearly for that mistake. However, in that moment, Dib was more concerned about his rival's once again weird behaviour than about whatever fate could await ahead for Louis and his minions. The fact that Zim had stepped in and tried to save him was odd in itself, but it was pretty clear that it was hardly the only wrong thing in the picture.

"Oh, and who's going to make us regret it? _You_ , shortie?" Louis mocked as he moved towards the alien and Dib winced a bit, knowing how sensible the Irken was about his height. Or better, about his lack of it. "You're begging for a lesson just as hard as your friend here."

Zim stood in his spot, not moving an inch or trying to do anything to shield himself when the human punched him. He stumbled back slightly, but he regained his balance almost immediately and locked his eyes on the bully's face once again, violet irises just as void and apathetic as before. He didn't even bother to brush off the stain of pinkish blood from the corner of his mouth. He simply watched as Louis hesitated for a moment, dumbfounded by the lack of reaction, and then let himself being grabbed and pushed into the closest wall, not fighting back as blows and kicks started to rain on him. Every time he was forced to double over or that his face was turn away by the force of the hit, he simply straightened again and moved his blank gaze back onto his assaulter's face, not a sound leaving his throat.

The bully kept hitting him for a while, but soon his blows started to become more and more uncertain, as the turmoil evoked by the look in those violet eyes grew stronger every second. Even his two companions were getting more and more uneasy, weirded out by the empty look on the alien's face. In the end, the beating ceased, more because Louis had become too uncomfortable and irrationally scared to continue than because he was done.

"You…You masochistic freak!" He screamed, stuttering his words with a hint of fear in his voice. "Stop it! Stop staring at me!" He lifted his fist again, but instead of striking he took a step back as Zim's orbs bore even more deeply in his own. "You…You…" He shook his head. "This isn't worth it. You're too dumb to even see that you're asking to die, creep. Let's go." He turned towards Dib, gesturing his minions that it was time for retreat. "This isn't over, Membrane. Don't even think that you've got away with it."

The scythe-haired boy didn't react when he was set free. His gaze was still locked on the Irken, expression filled with wary astonishment. As the beating went on, he had been expecting his rival's PAK legs to emerge any moment and tear the bully into shreds. The look on the Invader's face promised nothing less, after all. Instead, Zim had just stood there, allowing himself to be hit over and over, even if after each blown the one looking like he had just been punched had been Louis and not him. He wasn't surprised, though. His nemesis's eyes were as dangerous as his lasers in that moment and they had been just as effective. The Invader had literally sent the three running away in fear just by staring at them. It was impressive, also because he had never seen Zim acting like that. Usually he drove people away by creeping them out, but what he had instilled in the bullies this time was real terror. Dib himself had felt deeply uncomfortable. Still was.

"Zim…" He started, unsure, taking a step towards his rival. The other's mood was unreadable and he wasn't sure of how he would react to any of his words or actions.

"Leave Zim alone, Dib-thing," the Irken shot back, voice sharp but still much quieter than it usually was. There were a couple of bruises already forming on his jaw and one on his left temple, just under the border of the wig. More would soon blossom under his uniform. There was a small line of blood coming out of his mouth and this time he wiped it off with the back of his glove. He detached himself from the wall, ignoring the pain, and went to grab the bag with his books that he had left in a corner, before approaching the bullies.

Without sparing the human another glance, he turned around and stalked off, heading towards the classroom where his next lesson would take place. Dib remained frozen on his spot, unsure of what he should do, watching the alien's thin figure walking away. A part of him wanted to run after him, grab him and ask what the hell all that had been about. Even thank him and ask him what was wrong with him, if he was sick, if some other problem had come up with the anomaly. However, he refrained himself from following that rushed instinct. Not only he wouldn't have got a word out of Zim, but he might have risked unleashing on himself the violence that, for some reason, hadn't been released on his three aggressors. He hadn't escaped a beating just to get into another brawl with the person who had saved him, which might have had even nastier consequences.

With the umpteenth sigh of the day, he bent down to pick up his own books, which had fallen on the floor when he had been shoved down. He had thought that seeing Zim would have solved his doubts, but instead the meeting had brought up even more questions. He would try to corner the Invader again in the cafeteria during lunch break. Perhaps he could have persuaded Gaz to help. She always refused to get involved in his fights with the alien, but maybe, if he had told her what had happened, she might get curious enough to assist him. He didn't count too much on it, but it was worth a try. After all, his sister was one of the few people who seemed to truly scare the Irken, so having her with him would be a real advantage.

Nodding to himself, deciding that the plan was good enough, he brushed his clothes and resumed his way towards his next lesson, even if his mind was already launched towards imagining how the lunch break could have turned out.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

Zim didn't show up in the cafeteria after the morning lessons. He knew that Dib would have most likely been waiting for him there, demanding explanations, so he avoided the place completely, not caring to put up his usual act with the meal. He couldn't eat most Earth foods in the first place and he was still feeling a bit nauseous because of GIR's waffles. This time, however, it wasn't because they had been poisoned. The robot had managed to feed him sweets without any additional ingredients, aside from a batch that had been a bit soapy. They had simply eaten too many of them during the night.

Once his PAK had healed him from the consequences of his rampage, Zim had spent the whole time between Saturday and Tuesday morning rebuilding his lab. He had done it mostly to keep himself busy, and not because he actually needed it. Of course his SIR Unit had been helping, which explained why it had taken so long, together with the fact that he had chosen to do everything with his hands, instead of having the Computer's mechanical arms helping. He had exploited the opportunity to make the modifications he had been planning for some time, just to drag the work on as long as possible.

Once it had been done, he and his sidekick had gone upstairs and watched a marathon of Angry Monkey show, munching whatever was edible and within arm's reach, which included some of Zim's Irken snacks and the latest sandwiches GIR had made. Then, when the night had started to fall, they had moved to the kitchen and the robot had baked waffles like a madman, screaming about an eating contest, which had led to an early morning session of puking for his master.

The Invader had considered skipping school that day too, not really wanting to waste his time among disgusting, smelly humans. He was hardly in the mood for any kind of company, aside from the forced one of his artificial aides. The mere thought of putting on his disguise had made his antennae and eyes itch. However, since at some point in those three days, between a mouthful of food and a repaired circuit, he had decided that he would stay on Earth and act as if nothing had changed until the Tallest broke the news to him officially, he had chosen to avoid having troubles and to report for student duty with a note to justify his absence, signed by his non-existent parents. The indigestion hadn't been part of the plan, so he had been forced to skip the first three hours of lessons, but he had eventually showed up.

The alien leant against the external wall of the building, in the back yard, in a spot that was away from the ones the other students used the most. He hadn't meant to run into Dib being bullied either, of course. It wasn't the first time he witnessed such a show and it wouldn't have been the last, but this time it had definitely been different. When they were still in Skool, in Ms Bitters' class, he usually just stood back and laughed when the other children harassed his rival, enjoying the show. Hi Skool bullying was harsher, he had picked up that too, since he had been targeted in turn more than a few times. However, that hadn't really changed his attitude towards it, even if he had felt actual anger in the occasions when Dib had been roughened up too much. The human was _his_ nemesis, he belonged to him in an ugly, twisted, hateful way no human could have ever understood, and he should have been the only one allowed to break him, in any possible meaning of the word. However, the feeling had never got intense enough to make him lash out, not until that morning.

Zim scratched his contact lenses distractedly. His choice to step in had almost nothing to with his rival and he knew it. He had happened to chance upon the scene and heard the insults and his mind had instantly replaced Dib with himself, sparking up a bit of the rage that had led him to destroy his own base a few days before. He hadn't fought back on the spot because it would have meant blowing his cover up, but he had all the intentions of getting back at the filthy Earthen being who had dared to touch him. He would make sure to make him experience unspeakable sufferings, once for every time the worm had hit him, plus an additional time for having refused his command. Then he would kill him and get rid of his worthless carcass. Destroying that ball of filth might not be his mission anymore, might have never been it, but that didn't mean that he couldn't make it and its pathetic inhabitants _burn_ , out of spite, if he felt like it. In a future dictated just by his moods, the bully might be just the first of very long list of casualties. It wasn't an invasion anymore, it wasn't war. It was just pure, uncontrolled destruction. After all, that was the main reason why Defectives were either confined to the lowest ranks of the Irken society or killed off. They were unpredictable, mostly lethal wild cards who turned everything they touched into ruins.

The filthy pig would have to wait before meeting his demise, though. Zim had other plans, a scheme he had come up with not much after he had decided to remain on Earth. Since he was planning to keep acting as his usual, there was no reason why he shouldn't have some fun with it and nothing was more satisfying than targeting his least favourite, or most favourite, depending on the point of view, human. A small, mostly empty smirk lazily stretched on his face. Conquering the planet for an Armada that wouldn't come didn't make any sense, but that didn't mean that he couldn't torment his nemesis, shoving his superiority in his face over and over, forcing him to play along with his plans and to fight for a miserable planet that was already doomed, even without the Irken's intervention. He would force him and his whole race on their knees and made them experience the same void and humiliation that was eating him up.

"Hey, what are you doing here?" A voice called out in his direction, sounding slightly irritated and familiar too.

The Invader's head shot up as he abandoned his thoughts, a frown forming on his face as his fake eyes landed on the figure standing a few steps away from him. Gaz was regarding him with open hostility, arms crossed over her chest and her console firmly held in the fingers of her right hand. Her eyes were even more narrowed than her usual, which meant that she was more annoyed, and she was tapping her foot impatiently, as if waiting for him to comply to an obscure silent order.

The Irken held her gaze for a few moments, waiting for her to state her intentions, but, since the only result he obtained was for her to tap her foot faster, he gave in and asked, not even trying to hide his confusion: "What do you want from Zim, Dib-sister?"

"That's _my_ spot," she shot back flatly, nodding towards the small recess in the wall that the alien was currently occupying. That part of the yard was avoided by most students because it was where the bullies usually took their victims for a good session of thrashing, but she didn't care. No one in their right mind would have tried to mess with her and the place was quiet, hidden from view and mostly deserted. Exactly what she needed to play the hardest levels of her games. It was also where she could go to avoid her brother, so she wasn't going to share. "Get lost, Zim."

The Irken pushed himself away from the wall, but he didn't move from his spot. The girl scared him, but he had no intention to show it, even if they both knew what the truth was. His devastated pride wasn't ready to take another hit and the newly discovered truth hadn't really affected his natural stubbornness, so he stood his ground.

"I was here first, human. There's no sign of you having tagged this place as your own, so go away and find yourself another spot," he spat out, voice filled with a despise he wasn't feeling. But then, he hardly felt anything these days.

Gaz rolled her eyes at the answer she got. She didn't have time for that crap. There were only twenty minutes left before the start of the afternoon lessons and she intended to use them to finish the level she was currently working on. A dumb, annoying alien from outer space wouldn't prevent her from doing that. Uncrossing her arms, she marched towards where Zim stood, grabbing him by the front of his uniform as soon as he was within arm's reach, and shoved him aside, making place for herself in the recess. Then, without a word, she sat down on the cement step and turn on her game, eyes locking on the screen, as if she had forgotten that she wasn't alone.

For a moment, when the human had stalked towards him, the Invader had feared for his life and, when her hand had wrapped around his clothes, he had been certain that she was about to hit him. Instead, all he had got had been a glare and a push, which hadn't even been enough to make him step out of the nook. He had only found himself pushed against the wall so that the girl could comfortably sit at his feet. He blinked, a bit surprised by the lack of violence, and then slowly started to sink down, crouching next to his unexpected companion.

Gaz's eyes darted to him for a moment and she looked a bit angered by the fact that he hadn't left, but then she looked back at the screen. Her gaze had been inquisitive too, under the evident annoyance. She had expected the Invader to screech and break into one of his rants, but instead he had remained quiet. Perhaps Dib had been onto something when he had mentioned her that Zim was acting even weirder than he had been the previous week. She could see the signs that her brother had described her. They stood out like neon lights compared to the Irken's usually overconfident demeanour.

"You can watch if you want," she conceded out of the blue, fingers hitting the buttons skilfully. "But if you dare to breathe a word and disturb me, or if you go around and tell anyone that I let you stay, I'll make you regret the day you've been hatched."

Once again Zim was caught off guard by the girl's words and actions, but he decided not to argue back. After all, anything was better than being left alone with his thoughts in that moment. He wondered what might have pushed the human to be so tolerant with him, if Dib had told her about what had happened earlier or if she simply cared so little about him that having him there or having him gone were the same thing in her eyes. He didn't want to push his luck by asking, so he brought his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them and rested his chin on them, head slightly tilted so that he could watch the ongoing battle on the screen.

The only sounds that echoed in the otherwise mostly silent spot where the ones of the game and the noise of Gaz's fingers hitting the buttons. A couple of times, she shot the Irken a look, feeling slightly weirded out by how _quiet_ he was, and for a moment she wondered what exactly could be wrong with the moron that time. However, the thought was discarded almost immediately. She would eventually find out, because Dib would investigate. Her brother always got to the bottom of things, especially whenever Zim was involved. She almost let out a scoff at that. She would be forced to hear everything about it, as always. She had no doubts.


	10. Chapter 10

Hi there!

Here goes chapter 10. Here goes chapter 10. Sorry for the delay, but I haven't been very inspired lately and I sort of got the feeling that my last chapter didn't turn out to be good enough. That sort of stalled me =.=

I have to say that I'm almost proud of how the last part of the chapter came out (it's my fave part among the ones I've published till now, together with chapter 8 and Zim's reaction), so I hope that you will like it too this time. This chapter, as the previous one, should give you a clearer idea of what post-revelation-Zim's state of mind is. A small warning. While the first half of the chapter is pretty light, the other half has some serious angst, so...I thought I left you a small warning. Also, I think I'll be updating sooner than usual next time too, if I manage!

Thanks to all the people who read and favourite this story. I'm glad that you all are following me and enjoying my work ^^ Please, if you have comments or observations, feel free to let me know! Hearing people's opinions helps me a lot!  
And of course, the special mention for the people who reviewed the previous chapter, **Rocky Rooster** and **guestrev**. Thank you for your support. It's what gives me the motivation to keep writing and posting!

 **guestrev** : First of all thanks for taking the time to note down all the mistakes you found. I appreciated it! I'll make sure to do the needed corrections asap! Secondly, but just as important, thanks for the review. I'm glad to hear that you're still enjoying the story! And I always liked the idea of Zim and Gaz being friends (in their unique way of course), so I'm planning to have that happen in this story :3

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encourage. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

Enjoy!

* * *

A few days passed since Zim's return to Hi Skool. Dib watched him carefully during the lessons they shared. He tried to pick up any sort of sign that could help him understanding what was up with his rival, pretty much as he had done when the other had suddenly started to act nice. However, just as the previous time, it all turned out to be a waste of energy and attention. The Irken's demeanour remained unchanged. His shoulders stayed slumped, his eyes dull and he was so quiet that everyone, the teachers included, noticed. The alien didn't scream, didn't snicker to himself, didn't speak a single word, not even when he was addressed. He spent the lessons staring at the void in front of him, not even bothering to open his books and notes and pretend to be paying attention. It was like having to deal with a silent ghost and the only reason why the teen knew that the Invader wasn't simply a paper silhouette was because he moved.

At last, out of exasperation, Dib tried to approach his nemesis in every possible, walking up to his desk, yelling his name in his face, threatening him, throwing objects to him. However, all his attempts were met with a thick wall of silence and weird glances from their classmates. The only time he elicited some sort of reaction was when he reached out to pull at the Invader's wig, but, even in that case, all he got was for his hand to be merely slapped away. It was as if Zim was ignoring him, just as he himself had done a couple of years before, when he had temporarily given the paranormal up in favour of his father's beloved "real science". The idea however was discarded almost immediately because the Irken's apathy wasn't just extended towards him, but it seemed to be the way in which he went about everything he did.

During the weekend, Dib spent most of his time spying on his rival's base, through the cameras he had installed and that still hadn't been found, but even that didn't give him any answer. The alien spent most of those two days sat in front of the television, watching movies with GIR and eating waffles. There was just one time when he took the elevator down to his lab, but the teen had no way to find out to do what. His spying devices in that section of the base seemed to have been removed, since he didn't have any sort of access to them anymore. He had no idea that they had fallen victims to Zim's fury, just as the rest of the equipment. The Invader was gone only for a few hours, and then resumed his lazing around.

The episode was enough to spark the teen's suspicions, though. While he was persuaded that there was a deeper reason to the Irken's moods, he still had the feeling that the other was cooking up one of his plans in the meanwhile too. He needed to find out what it was before it could be set into motion and cause harm. Maybe the battle that would follow would also give him the pretext he needed to question his nemesis about his newest change of attitude.

With those intentions in mind, he went to Skool on Monday, taking a seat at his usual desk and glancing at Zim's still empty one. The Invader still arrived just a minute or so before the ring of the bell. That was one of the very few things about his behaviour that hadn't changed. In fact, as expected, only thirty seconds before the official start of the lesson, the door was opened, but, unlike what had happened in the previous days, it wasn't just pushed slightly, but actually flung open with enough force that it hit the wall with a loud thud.

"Zim's not late!" The Irken screamed and he ran inside, managing to jump in his chair just a moment before the bell rang. The teacher shot him a glare and so did the rest of the class, but no one made a comment. It was the most normal behaviour, at least for the disguised alien's standards, that they had witnessed in the last two weeks, so they felt reassured that things had finally gone back to normalcy.

Dib himself raised an eyebrow in his rival's direction, gaining a small, smug smirk in reply, which left him even more perplexed. What was going on? Zim seemed to be back to his usual self, if the little show he had just put on was a hint to the Invader's state of mind. And, the more time passed, the more the teen was pushed to think that it might be the case. The Irken spent all the lesson scribbling furiously, working on something that clearly weren't the notes of their history course, smirking widely to himself. He even let out one of his loud, apparently unmotivated fits of laughter at one point, which he tried to suppress into a snicker when the teacher scolded him.

The familiar behaviour soothed the scythe-haired boy's concerns, making his determination grow. Perhaps the gloomy attitude that his nemesis had showed in the previous days had been just a side effect of whatever he had done to remove the influence of the anomaly from his system. It made sense, since the two events had happened one after the other. Also, Zim's indifference could be seen as the opposite of the peculiar kind of caring the Irken had shown while being affected by the space radiations. Perhaps a period of adjustment had been necessary before his PAK could go back functioning as it usually did, free from any external influence. The more Dib thought about it, the more the explanation seemed plausible and the sight of his nemesis acting as he was supposed to do, scheming and being a creepy sum of random human stereotypes, was a strong push to believe that the theory was the actual truth.

When the lesson ended, he grabbed his things quickly, wanting to confront Zim and let him know that he was aware that he was plotting something, in the hope that the other would accidentally spill some detail of his plan. However, when he turned towards the alien's desk, he found that his rival had already darted out of the classroom, leaving him behind. Dib frowned. Apparently, the Invader was determined not to have him nosing around his business this time, but he wouldn't allow the space monster to keep him at distance. He would catch him before the end of the school day, no matter what. If the Irken thought that he could escape him, he was very, very wrong.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

The rest of Dib's day resembled very much a game of hide and seek. Zim kept disappearing during breaks in-between lessons, just to show up in the classroom at the last minute, taunt him for the whole time they shared the room and then leave again just as abruptly, not giving the teen a chance to stop him. At one point, towards the end of the last morning class, the Invader had even thrown him a balled piece of paper, which once opened revealed the message: "You'll never catch ZiM this time!". Irritation had blossomed inside the human's chest at the sight. He had almost seen the smugness physically dripping out of the written words and his determination to prove the other's wrong had grown even more.

However, the Irken was nowhere to be found during lunch break. Dib spent the whole time looking for him, foregoing his lunch, in every classroom and closet, on every floor, including the basement. The bastard had to have hidden in the air ducts to stay out of sight, most likely working on the same weird machine he had been toying with for half of the morning. The teen wondered if the ploy was supposed to take place in the Hi Skool building or if all that show was Zim trying to drive him crazy and exhaust him, so that he wouldn't have been able to stop him when the crucial moment would come. Or perhaps the alien, in his usual, blind overconfidence, was just playing him, exposing himself because he didn't think that Dib had an actual chance at spoiling his plan. After all, the Invader seemed to never learn from his past defeats. The human wasn't going to point it out, though. The more self-assured his rival acted, the easier it was for him to stop him.

The afternoon passed pretty much like the morning had. Luckily for Dib, the two of them had shared all their classes for the day aside from one and, by the time the last bell rang, he was ready. This time he managed to reach the alien's desk before the other could flee, putting himself between his nemesis and the quickest way to the door, more or less trapping him in a corner of the classroom. He allowed himself a small victorious smirk at the result, opening his arms as if preparing to catch the Invader if he had tried to escape. The other students shot them a few raised eyebrows, but their antics were dismissed with a few grumbled "crazy" and "freaks". For once, however, the teen didn't even hear the whispers, focused as he was on his target.

"I know that you're plotting something, Zim!" Dib accused in a loud voice, pointing a finger towards the Irken's chest. "And I will stop you, just as I always do. Whatever you're planning, you won't get away with it, alien scum!"

Zim quickly moved back, as if to avoid being touched, and his fake violent eyes darted around, looking for a way out. They were the only ones left in the room and a sly grin opened on his face at the realisation. "You think you can beat the Mighty Zim, worm child?" He shot back, arrogance filling his tone. "Fool! You'll watch powerless as I destroy your worthless planet. Then we'll see if you will still feel like smiling that ugly smile of yours! Try and stop me, inferior human. I will crush you as the powerless insect you are!"

Dib narrowed his eyes, spotting the movement. The alien seemed to be trying to avoid physical contact for some reason. He had noticed it a couple of times already, as he had caught a glimpse of his nemesis in the crowd, struggling to stay away from the people surrounding him. Why was that? Had he sprayed himself with some particular substance? Perhaps something that would keep him unaffected by whatever he was planning for Earth destruction?

"Keep deluding yourself, moron. But the truth is that this plan of yours will fail, just like the others. It's inevitable, considering your stupidity!" He growled out, gripping at the desk that separated them. For a moment, he thought he had caught the other flinching at his words, but the change of expression was so quick to come and go that he could have just imagined it. It wasn't the right time to notice those details, though. He had more important things to take care of. "Why don't you just give up already and stop wasting our time?"

"LIES! Filthy, utter lies!" The Irken screeched loudly, pointing his claws towards the human. "My plans are amazing and the only waste of time here it's you, Dib-beast!"

They squinted at each other for a few moments, identical expression on their faces, with one eye open and the other narrowed. However, the stall didn't last long. Without warning, the teen launched himself forward, leaping over the desk, arms stretched out to get a hold of his opponent. The latter, however, didn't allow himself to be caught off guard, and narrowly avoid him, PAK legs erupting from his back and lifting him in the air, allowing him to jump above the human and the row of desks. He landed in front of the door, metal limbs retreating and disappearing from sight a moment before his boots hit the floor once again.

Zim turned around to stick his ridged tongue out, in a scornful gesture, and then ran out of the classroom with a booming laugh. Dib was left behind with his mouth gaping for a moment, propped against the wall he had slammed into when the alien had jumped out of his way, a mix of incredulity and irritation on his face. Damned Irken technology.

"That's cheating!" He shouted after his nemesis as he recovered from the shock and then hurried after him, rushing along the corridor. The statement was a bit stupid, because the Invader never played fair, but he couldn't help himself.

He bumped into several people on his way to the building main exit, but didn't stop to apologise, ignoring the curses and the insults that were thrown in his direction. He had to save their ungrateful asses from the alien menace they refused to acknowledge, so he didn't have time to waste. Besides, everyone already hated him and giving them one more reason to call him names wouldn't make any difference. He caught the sight of a blur of purple hair as he ran past the entrance, which was probably his sister's, but he didn't stop to talk to her either. Gaz was more than capable to go home on her own and she would probably be happy to be rid of him for the evening. Not to mention that, if she had seen Zim rushing past her too, she had to have already guessed what was going on. One more reason for her to be glad to be away from them both.

Once he had reached the front yard, the teen stopped, looking around frantically, trying to spot his nemesis in the crowd of chatting students. There were a lot of people around him, but Zim's skin was green and that was something that tended to stand out even in the thickest crowd. The fact that the Invader was shorter than most people was a bit of an obstacle, but he was confident that he would find him before he could get away. His amber eyes scanned the bodies surrounding him and finally, after almost a whole minute, he caught the sight of a reddish uniform sneaking through the crowd ahead of him, heading for the main road.

"I'll stop you, Zim!" He yelled after the alien, breaking into a run once again. "And one day the whole world will see you for what you really are!"

As soon as he had reached the borders of the yard, he took the direction in which the other seemed to have headed, spotting him a few metres away from him. The Irken was holding the mysterious device in one of his gloved hands and was snickering, most likely laughing at him. Both sights were enough to push him to run more quickly, his determination to catch up with the other giving him a new burst of energy.

The Invader turned to shoot him a look from over his shoulder, smirked widely and sped up too, taking a sudden turn into the first alley he found, clearly confident that he would lose him. The teen couldn't help thinking that it was a dumb plan, because he knew the City much better than the alien did, having lived there his whole life, while his rival had been there for less than four years and he doubted that the other had taken the time to memorise a map of the place. Besides, they were running in the direction of Zim's base, which was the most predictable destination. Whatever the small machine the Irken had been working on was, it was most likely the piece of some bigger mechanism and there was no better place to keep the latter hidden than in the depths of his nemesis's secret lab.

With that knowledge in mind, Dib rushed along the street that the Irken had taken, but then took a different turn, his mind tracing the briefest route that would allow him to cut in front of his nemesis and intercept him before the other reached his destination. His breath was starting to get a bit short for all the running he had been doing, but he forced himself to keep the pace he had set and even to speed up a bit when he was close to the arrival point. His muscles would probably be aching a bit for the overexertion the next day, but it would be worth it, just as every bruise he would gain from the fight that would surely happen.

Just as he had expected, the Invader appeared from behind a corner several moments after he had reached it and the smug expression on Zim's face fell as soon as he noticed the human who, instead of being behind him, was now standing in front of him. The teen smirked. The alien had most likely thought to have succeeded in losing him and now he had realised that he had been tricked instead.

"It's over, Zim! You lose, again," he claimed, triumphant and, without waiting for an answer or for the other to recover from his surprise and react, he jumped on his opponent, aiming to tackle him on the ground and to rip the device from his fingers. Once he would have got his hands on it he would have taken a moment to enjoy the astonished expression on the Irken's face as he smashed it, together with his rival's plan.

However, things didn't go as he had planned. Instead of crashing into the Invader's thin, hard body as he had expected, the human found himself rolling on the dirty floor of the alley. Dib's eyes widened, incredulous, because he hadn't seen Zim moving to avoid his attack and his shock grew even more as he whipped his head around and found his nemesis standing exactly where he had been, an ugly smirk occupying his face. He should have impacted into him, there was no way he could have missed such a large target from so close, if the alien hadn't swerved. The only explanation was that he had…passed through him.

"How did you…You…" He stuttered, struggling to get back on his feet, eyes huge, his mind working madly to make sense of what had just happened.

"I'm a hologram," the image of the Irken answered the unfinished question, sticking a hand in his body and showing how it easily passed through him. He let his head fall back and laughed madly. "You've been chasing an illusion all day, Dib-worm, giving Zim the time and the space to complete my amazing plan! Tell me, human. Who's the moron now? Who's the loser?"

The teen let out a horrified sound as the pieces clicked in together. That explained why the alien had been taunting him so openly all day and why he had done his best to avoid touching other people. He had meant to hold his undivided attention, completely succeeding, and had had to hide the fact that he was just a projection of the real Zim, one sophisticated enough to move around inanimate objects without risking being exposed, but that couldn't deal with moving beings as skilfully.

He opened his mouth to say something, in the vain, desperate hope that words could make up for the terrible mistake he had made. He had underestimated his nemesis, acting just as overconfidently as the other usually did, and the Irken had exploited it. Perhaps he had been listening too much to Gaz saying that the Invader was too dumb to take over Earth, so much that he had started to believe it himself, and that was the result. He had forgotten how capable and devious Zim could be at times, even if usually never in his plans, and that had been the mark of his downfall. Earth would succumb because he had lowered his guard, too excited to see that his rival had gone back to be more or less his usual self to focus on the small oddities that had remained in his behaviour.

A sudden stinging in his neck stopped him before he could shape a single syllable and he felt his body getting numb fast, most likely due to whatever drug he had just been injected. Before everything went back, his eyes caught the sight of two large magenta orbs staring down at him evilly. He tried to lift a hand and reach out for them, but his limbs refused to cooperate and a moment later the darkness of unconsciousness swallowed him.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

Dib came to his senses slowly. His head hurt and his sight was blurred, but, since he could feel the light weight of his glasses on his face, both conditions had to be a side effect of the sedative. The thought brought a spark of recognition in his mind and the events of the day burst inside his consciousness, making him snap his eyes wide open in the attempt to see where he was and what was going on. He was lying down on an operation table or something of the sort and, as he tried to move, he realised that he was strapped to the cold surface by metal restrains, set around his wrists, ankles and waist.

He let out a growl, tugging at them, but all he got out of it was to hurt himself. They were too tight and too strong. There was no getting out of them. He still tried a few more times, before giving up and raising his head as much as his current position allowed him to. It didn't take him long to recognise his location now that his sight had cleared. He was in Zim's lab and the Invader was a few metres away from him, bent over one of his computer consoles. He wasn't wearing his disguise and his PAK legs were out, hitting buttons all around him on other keyboards. All the screens of the room were turned on, showing graphics and flooding Irken characters. For some reason, the sight pushed a dreadful feeling in the teen's guts and his breath got caught in his lungs as he recalled the hologram's words. Whatever plan he had been talking about, it was clearly already in motion and he was in no position to stop it.

In that moment, his nemesis seemed to realise that he had awakened because he jerked around to face him, a hint of hesitation in his expression, which however faded as soon as he spotted the desperation in the human's expression. A cruel smirk lit up his face and his antennae perked up in evident delight as he retracted his spider legs and walked towards him.

"You're up, filthy human. Good. Just in time to witness Zim's ultimate victory!" He boasted as he stopped a couple of steps away from the operating table, hands on his hips. "You'll have the honour to watch your planet burning, while I decide what to do with you."

"What have you done, alien scum?!" Dib yelled at him, feeling his anguish sinking deeper and deeper together with the realisation that it could really be the end this time. "You can't have won. It's impossible! In such little time, you can't possible have…"

He couldn't finish the sentence since he knew very well what the Irken was capable of building overnight, with his more advanced technology and his well-trained skills. Still, he couldn't force himself to accept the possibility that was becoming more and more of a reality in front of his eyes. His voice was reduced to a pitiful, begging whisper. "You cannot…Please…"

Zim scoffed at his words, eyes filling with malice. He was clearly enjoying himself, watching his enemy's despair and feeding on it. In that moment he looked every inch of what he was supposed to be. A merciless, cruel, sadistic, deadly alien invader. "While you were busy wondering about my mood swings and playing with my hologram, I've built and planted several devices under the Earth's crust. Each of them has enough energy to act like the epicentre of the most devastating earthquake your planet has ever seen. Once activated, they have sent shakes all over the surface of this ball of dirt, breaking it into pieces together with all that's on it. The only place that has been spared is my base, because I have the technology to shield myself from the power of my weapons. But the rest of your world is meeting its end in this very moment. Cracked and smashed and burning with the fire of its very core!" His smirk became impossibly large. "And it's already done, Dib. I activated the devices while you were unconscious. All you've left to do is watching and crying for the end of your unworthy race."

The teen shook his head once again, in denial, but the truth was that it was getting harder and harder to even keep trying to put up a fight. There was something final in the Irken's voice, something that told him that this was no trick. That Earth was doomed and that there was no going back this time. Every building, every inch of soil, burnt or in ruins. Gaz, his father, dead or dying, together with the rest of humankind. It was too much, too overwhelming for him to take and he could feel his head getting lighter and lighter as the images of what the utter destruction of his home world could look like entered in his head.

"No, no, it can't be…" Were the only words that left his lips.

"Don't worry, worm child. Zim will show it to you, so you'll be able to stop struggling to stay in denial," the alien cut through his thoughts, as if he had just read them. Not that it was hard, since what the human was thinking was written all over his face. He grabbed the edge of the table, right over the human's head, and pulled, making the metal surface move in a vertical position, so that his nemesis was forced to stand next to him. "It will be the punishment for being in my way for so long. You disgusting, pathetic being. This is payback for wasting my time!" His magenta eyes shone with sadistic glee. "Computer, take us up!"

The command was instantly carried out. The patch of floor beneath their feet started to raise, running quickly towards the ceiling that opened before they could crash into it. They reached the roof in no time, but the platform didn't stop there and kept rising until it was floating high enough to show them most part of the City. Or rather, of the little that was left of it.

The ground was cracked in several points and long, deep, narrow abysses opened all over it, drawing a violent spiderweb all across the broken landscape. Almost all the buildings around the Irken's base had collapsed, leaving only piles of ruins and half-demolished walls standing. Objects from what had been daily life till an hour before were spread all around, emerging from the remains of the houses, a mocking reminder of what existence had used to be before it was turned into a deadly hell. Here and there, few rivers of lava crossed the destroyed desolation, the light of their fire giving the scenery an even more disquieting look. There were people running all around, screaming, looking for a salvation that couldn't be found. They tripped on the bodies of those who had already lost their lives in the attempt of escaping the burning nightmare or of those who had been luckier and had been killed on the spot by the earthquakes, being spared the sight of everything they knew being turned into ashes.

Dib had felt like he should start screaming in the same moment when the ground moved under them, in rage, desperation, horror, pain, or maybe a mix of them all. However, the sound had remained stuck in his throat, making him choke on the emotions that were too intense to be processed or expressed. It finally came out as a strangled hiss only once the real entity of the destruction the alien had brought upon his world was laying before his eyes, terrible and undeniable. He could see the fire and the blood, the abysses ripping the planet apart like gaping, lethal wounds, the people fighting uselessly in their panicked state, the brutal pain. He could imagine the millions of lives trapped underground, under the ruins of their own homes and of the other places where they had always thought they were safe. He could imagine them bleeding and dying, in agony and terror. And it was all on him. Protecting that world was the mission he had given himself and he had failed. Now, all mankind would pay the price of his inadequacy.

With a huge effort, he managed to tear his eyes away from the apocalyptic scenery and landed them on the being who was materially responsible for all that destruction. Zim's magenta eyes were in turn taking in the chaos and the death he had spread all around the planet and the flames made them shine in a way there was both beautiful and horrendous at the same time. He looked taller, stronger and much more dangerous, invincible even, as he gloated, proud of the blood of the billions of beings that soaked his hands. It suited him, in a revolting, gorgeous way, because he had been created for this. To infiltrate, conquer and destroy. To kill and spread blood, to prove the superiority of Irk to the whole universe, at the price of too many broken existences to count.

The Invader's head fell back as he let out a triumphant laugh, the cheerful sound so out of place among the screams of panic and anguish that filled the air. "Victory for Zim!" He yelled, seeming to address the whole Earth. His voice was cruel despite the exhilaration that filled it, with a note of spiteful bitterness. "Suffer, humans, die! Foolish creatures. You never stood a chance against the might of a soldier of Irk!"

In that moment, Dib wanted to hate him more than he had ever done, and he should have, with all his being, but he found that he didn't have the energy to do it. Most likely it was because he was in shock and his mind had shut down, unable to process what was happening. He couldn't even be angry anymore. All that was left was the desperation and the tears that, silently, ran down his cheeks. Perhaps he should have tried to hold them back, because they were nothing but a sign of weakness in his enemy's eyes, but he was just so tired. The fight was over, the war was lost. He almost wished that the Irken would just kill him and end his sufferings.

A part of him still refused the idea of dying, supported both by the survival instinct genetically encoded in his DNA and by the will to fight till the very end, but it was slowly losing the battle against the bitter truth. There was nothing left to do. Even if he wouldn't die with the rest of his race, all there was ahead of him was a life in slavery. He would be left behind, forced to the lowest, most menial tasks, stripped of his dignity and identity, while his nemesis would go forward, towards other planets, bringing on them the same wave of destruction that was consuming Earth before their eyes in that very moment. Fate seemed so unfair and crueller.

Zim slowly turned away from the sight of his victory, his large magenta orbs moving on the human. His smirk took an even more twisted hue as he moved to stand before the teen, a section of the platform lifting him up a bit so that their faces could be at the same height. "You lost, Dib. You lost everything. Your family, your planet, your race. It's gone. You have nothing left. Nothing but Zim," he hissed, leaning in, his gaze locking in his rival's amber eyes.

He hooked one clawed finger under the other's chin and raised it, to make sure that the human wouldn't look away. Then he moved even closer, his lips brushing against Dib's. The contact was gentle, soft, but also mocking and sharp at the same time. He broke away just enough to be able to go on talking. "How does it feel, seeing your life being smashed before your eyes? Watching everything you have ever believed in turning into a cruel lie? You thought you could beat me, save your disgusting people from their demise by Zim's hands, but you were just deluding yourself. It has never been a fair fight. I have always been a step ahead of you, even when you managed to stop me." The claw sank deeper in the soft flesh, drawing blood. "I want to hear it, Dib. Tell Zim. Tell me that I won and that you lost."

The teen felt his skin burning horribly, as if acid had been poured over it, when the alien's mouth pressed slightly against his. The gesture made his stomach revolt even more than the sight of what was being done to his home world. It felt so intimate that it violated him, so deeply that he hadn't known it could be possible. The words that the Irken had spoken just before the kiss, about how Zim was all he had left now, would have been absurd till an hour before, but now they were the utter, harsh truth. If the Invader had been a huge part of his life before, now it was the only one that had survived.

The knowledge made him want to instinctively hold the other where he was, in his space, close enough to touch, even if at the same time he felt a strong repulsion towards everything that concerned the monster who was on his way to exterminate his kind. However, that didn't count much in that moment. He was afraid that, if the alien had moved away, he would have lost the only connection with reality he had left and gone completely insane. The idea was so scary that he would have rather bow to the Irken's demands, humiliate himself and surrender, if that meant that they could keep standing as they were, for long enough to allow him to get a proper, steadier hold on himself.

His stomach spasmed, hard and painfully, almost making him groan for the unpleasant sensation. He felt like he was about to throw up, like his body was shaken by the shiver of a high fever. "Zim, please…" He breathed out, words coming out in a broken sob, not really knowing what he was begging for. His death? His life? A moment of complete clarity? Or the oblivion that could make all the pain fade away? For the alien to let him go? Or to keep him forever? He had no idea. His mind was too foggy, too dazed. The only things he was aware of were the Irken's body brushing his own, claw scratching the skin of his throat, and the gaping ache in his chest.

"Say it, Dib," Zim repeated firmly, his voice lowering in a threatening growl, even if the victorious smirk still remained in place. It seemed like nothing could be able to wipe it off. Perhaps not even if the human had refused to comply. That was the Invader's day, the moment when his worth had been proven in everyone's eyes, on both Earth and Irk. And in the rest of the universe too.

"I…" The teen started, choking on the single syllable that escaped his lips. There was still a part of him that didn't want to admit defeat, even if it was such a concrete fact now, but it was getting weaker and weaker as his own eyes got duller and duller. The screams around them were dying out too, sign that humankind was just a few breaths away from perishing completely and becoming nothing but a word in the history of the cosmos, joining the who knew how many extinct races that had come before them. He and Earth would fall into the darkness of the past, while Zim and Irk would keep thriving in the light of the future. It was all set, everything was already decided.

The hated words, the ones that he had never thought he would pronounce and that he once wouldn't have spelled, not even under torture, suddenly became so easy to speak. "I…lost. It's over. You did it, Zim. You destroyed my planet and I couldn't stop you. I wasn't good enough. You bested me. You…won."

The smirk on the alien's face became even wider, so large that it had to be painful, but the Irken didn't really seem to mind. "Yes, I did," he confirmed, even if it was unnecessary, considering that everything around them proved his point already. He took a step away, eyes sparkling maliciously as he saw the human's body flinching at the distance he put between them and instinctively arching towards him, as to close it again. "Game over, Dib."

The teen's throat went dry as the Invader moved backward, taking away the warmth and the harshness that had been the only things grounding him. He opened his mouth, perhaps to finally scream or maybe to beg his nemesis to come closer again, to get back to him. To hurt him, torture him, kiss him, take him apart in every possible sense. He would accept it all, if it meant that the other would stay close. He needed it for his mind to stay steady. Or perhaps he had already fallen into madness and Zim was just the unstable, fundamental centre of it all.

However, before he could emit a sound, something completely unexpected happened. Zim's triumphant expression fell abruptly, like a mask sliding off the face of an actor, and it was replaced by the same distant, apathetic look that had been dwelling stably on the alien's face since he had showed up at Hi Skool again, after his brief absence. His eyes were no longer shining, not even with the brightness of the fires that were burning the Earth to the ground, and they had lost every trace of the proud strength that had been dominating his attitude until a moment before. His antennae were no longer perking up in excitement, but were lowered backwards, making him look somewhat painfully resigned.

Confusion washed all over Dib and he frowned, unable to understand what had happened, but before his mind could even start catching up with the sudden change, the Irken spoke again, his voice now flat and as empty as his gaze: "Computer, terminate simulation."


	11. Chapter 11

Hello there!

As promised I was a bit quicker with this chapter (even if not as quick as I would have wanted), considering the huge cliffhanger I left you with last time! Also, starting from next chapter, I'll be moving the author's notes at the end of the chapter, so I can comment it without risking to spoil you anything. I'll keep the top notes just for eventual warnings!

The start of chapter 11 is pretty much a coda to number 10, while the rest of the chapter brings the story a bit forward. I'm introducing a background but recurrent OC in this chapter (the counsellor that's mentioned in the summary). She's not super developed as a character, since she's mostly a supporting, background one, but I took inspiration from my real life experiences with therapy to writer her and this part of the arc. I hope you'll enjoy it, in this chapter and in the future ones.

I'll end this with a small warning. This chapter contains reference to a quite brutal murder, even if I didn't go into the details. I'm letting you know just to be safe!

Now, I want to thank all my readers as per usual. Knowing that there's someone interested in what I'm writing helps me a bit, even when I'm feeling very demotivated, as it's happening in this period. So, thank you for showing a bit of interest. If you have any opinion or suggestion you'd like to make, I'm all ears!

My special thanks go, as always, to my reviewers. I honestly would have stopped posting after the first few chapters, if it hadn't been for your comments, so...You keep me going and I hope I won't disappoint you guys!  
Also, the last chapter got more feedback (on the different sites I'm posting this fic) and damn, that was pretty much amazing. It gave me a bit of confidence back, after the radio silence (or almost) on chapter 9. So, thanks, really. I'm used not to get much feedback (if I get any), so when I get a bit more it's just...Well, it brightens my day. It makes me thing that my writing is worth a little bit instead of being just trash no one wants to read xD Sorry, I'm whining here ^^" Still what I meant to say is that I'm touched by your interest!  
Moreover, I wanted to make a special mention, even if the interested person won't see this till later on. I wanted to offer my personal thanks to **RissyNicole** , for all the support she's giving me and for the little cooperation we have started. You should go and check out her story. She's a really talented writer!

 **CawAreYouDoin:** Thanks a lot for the review! I'm glad you're enjoying the story and it's good to know that I made a decent job with keeping the characters IC, for most of the time at least. It's not always easy, especially in certain situations *sigh* But I try hard.  
About Zim's denial. I did think too that he would drag it longer, and that's why I made Red explicitly comment on the fact that Zim wouldn't accept the truth. To trigger a quicker reaction, because it would have more or less anticipated Zim's thoughts on the matter. It's a bit tricky, I know, but well...I thought it could have worked 0.0  
Zim is indeed in a very bad place right now, but also that...emptiness he feels sort of makes him much more lucid than he usually is, at least in my idea. So, given more time, he might actually manage to do a lot of damage. Assuming that he wants to xD  
I really hope you'll enjoy what comes next as you have enjoyed these chapters!

 **guestrev:** I hope that "strange chapter" isn't meant in a negative way! ^^" if it is, uh, well, I'm open to constructive critiques of all sorts. Aside from that, yeah, I noticed that tendency from Zim's part too. Somehow, he manages to be more focused and efficient when he's not carrying out his real mission. The muffin episode is actually what inspired me to write this part (I loved that episode btw)! Thanks for the review and for sticking with me! ^^

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encourage. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

Enjoy!

* * *

" _Computer, terminate simulation_."

At the command, the reality around them started to crumble, fading away in a few electrical buzzes. The loud, destroyed planet was replaced by the dim, quiet insides of Zim's lab and Dib found himself seated in a metal chair, some sort of device wrapped around his head, instead of being strapped to an operating table.

The Irken stepped away from the human, turning his back to him in favour of approaching one of the consoles, leaving his rival to slowly make sense of what had happened. Nothing had been real. Not the destruction of Earth, not the death Dib had witnessed. Only the emotions he had felt while trapped in that fake reality had been true, like the tears that wetted his face. The same emotions that were still making him shake. He couldn't help the irrational fear that it might all be a joke in the joke, that the Invader might be trying to lull him back into a false sense of security, making him believe that the apocalyptic ending he had been forced to witness had been just a simulation, while instead what he was seeing _now_ was the simulation. Damn, his head hurt even more just thinking about the many possibilities.

He was distracted by the chaos in his head when a pair of metal arms descended on him, removing the device from around his forehead and freeing his arms. He glanced at them suspiciously, almost expecting them to reach out and grab him again, but nothing of the sort happened and so he started to feel a bit more confident about the authenticity of the situation. He kept his eyes on the ceiling for one more moment, just to be sure, and then moved them on his nemesis.

"Zim!" He called, the anger he hadn't been able to feel because of the shock finally surfacing.

Now that he had calmed down and felt less confused about what had happened, he couldn't help feeling incredulous and absolutely enraged. What the alien had put him through had been pure psychological torture and he would surely have nightmares about it for at least a week. He had been traumatised, almost _broken_ , pushed into the deepest abyss of desperation. However, what was disturbing him the most was that, if it hadn't been all been a simulation, by now Earth would have been lost. The Invader's plan had been ingenious, cunning and deadly effective. The thought that the Irken might come up with something similar and actually put it in action scared the hell out of him. So, while he was mad because he had been played and humiliated for nothing but his nemesis's amusement, he was also glad that none of it had been real.

Zim ignored the teen's voice addressing him and kept working on his console, saving the data and the recordings of the simulation into the central system of his base. He had really built a working prototype of the devices with which he had pretended to have destroyed the Earth. He had even sent out probes with the aim of installing the machines, but he had attached to them mere, not functional replicas of the real devices. He had wanted to see if someone would have been able to detect them. No one had, not even his rival, since the latter had been too busy chasing around the ghost of himself he had sent to distract him, and his machines had worked undisturbed and perfectly on time. He could have destroyed the planet, if he had wanted to. The fact was that he hadn't. Not this time, not when he didn't have an Empire to hand a broken Earth to anymore.

The thought of doing it anyway, to show his Tallest that, Defective or not, he could still be a successful Invader had tempted him, for a moment. Perhaps if he had brought them a victory, his leaders might have reconsidered their opinion of him and allowed him to be still part of their people. However, in the end, he had discarded the thought. One planet was nothing compared to all the crimes they accused him of committing. Maybe, if he had given them the Earth, they would have spared his life and sent him back to work as a Service Drone, instead of terminating him, but he wouldn't have got the appreciation and the praises he longed for. He would have still been hated and misunderstood. It wasn't worth it.

So, instead, he had chosen to show his ability and superiority to the only person in the universe who seemed to take him seriously. During the simulation, he had lied, telling the human things that were true for himself. His rival still had his world, his people, the aim of his life. His existence hadn't turned out to be a lie. Zim's had and he had lost everything but the hateful human he had fought for so long. Aside from GIR and his more or less faulty tech, Dib was all he had left.

"Zim? What the hell was that all about?" Said teenager tried again, seeing that his previous attempt of questioning hadn't even been acknowledged. He stood up from the metal chair and marched towards the console, determined to at least make the alien look at him. "Is this your twisted idea of a _joke_? Because that wasn't fun at all." But perhaps, he reconsidered in the same moment when he was speaking those words, it had been fun for the Irken. He shook his head, discarding that thought. He couldn't have cared less if the other had enjoyed having a laugh at his expenses. It wasn't news, but this one time he had been particularly cruel. "I really thought that you had…" He swallowed, unable to finish the sentence. "Why? Why _hadn't_ you? It could have…actually worked."

"Of course it would have worked, Dib-worm," Zim shot back, sounding slightly annoyed, but when he finally turned to face the human there was no trace of irritation in his blank expression. He had to admit that he had experienced a perverse pleasure in witnessing his nemesis falling apart. The still distraught look on the other's face lit up a spark of that very same feeling too. However, it was all being swallowed by the void in his chest before he could have a chance to really enjoy it. "Zim's plans are always amazing." He spoke the sentence mostly out of habit, but the words sounded dull and meaningless compared to how pridefully he once used to pronounce them. He waved a hand and turned away from his rival once again. "You lost, the battle is over. Go home, Earth monkey. Leave me alone."

"But…" Dib tried to protest, incredulous. It couldn't end like that, as it happened after the Irken had saved him from Louis the week before. This time he wouldn't leave without an explanation, without a closure that could help him making sense of the episode.

"Computer, get rid of the Dib-intruder," the Invader ordered, cutting him off before he could even start voicing his opposition. He wouldn't let the human bug him, question his actions, demand answers he himself didn't really have. The less he thought about his current situation and what he was doing, the better and the easier it would be. "And update the security system to the highest level once he's gone."

"Yes, master! It'll be my pleasure!" The Computer chirped almost happily as its mechanical arms shot out again, trying to snatch the human away. It was in a quite good mood that day, since for once the Irken had used its technology at the best of its capability, instead of wasting its potential as per usual. It had been afraid of having been demoted to the function of a punching bag after Zim had finally learnt the truth about his condition. Instead, aside from the messy destruction that had fallen upon the laboratory immediately after the news, the facts had proved it wrong.

"Wait, Zim, dammit!" Dib tried to protest, managing to escape the machine's first attempts to capture him, narrowly avoiding the metal arms that shot towards him from every direction, but in the end he was subdued, outnumbered. One of those cold, tight pliers managed to catch his ankle, tripping him and sending him face down on the floor. The mechanical limb was immediately followed by another one, which caught him by the arm, effectively lifting him, but not before he had collided with the cold ground with a dull thud sound.

"Don't, you alien scum, I want…" He yelled again, struggling against the iron grips that held him, but once again he couldn't finish his sentence because he was thrown into a tight conduct, barely large enough for him to fit into it, and then literally sucked upwards at a mad speed.

Before he could realise it, he was landing on the driveway that led to the entrance of the alien's house, rolling past the disquieting garden gnomes and outside the small gate, till he found himself on his back on the pavement. A passer-by shot him a weird look and moved past him, making sure to keep a safe distance and muttering something that sounded like "crazy kid" under her breath.

Dib groaned, in both pain and annoyance, bringing a hand up to his face to make sure that his glasses were still there and that they weren't too damaged, before pushing himself up in a seated position. His ribcage hurt and so did his head, since he had banged them both over and over along the conduct first and on the cement later. Damn alien. Firstly he traumatised him for reasons that weren't completely clear to him and then he abused him physically while kicking him out of his base. He shouldn't be surprised, considering how mean Zim could be.

Shaking his head, he managed to stumble back on his feet, rubbing the side of his skull slightly, in the attempt of easing the ache. He shot a glance at the garden in front of him. All the gnomes were looking in his direction, laser eyes ready to target him in the case he had tried to go back inside. The Invader's security had always been tight, even if he had managed to infiltrate the base several times before. However, he had the feeling that it wouldn't be so easy now that his rival had upgraded his defensive systems. Perhaps, for the moment, he had better retreat and come back once he had regrouped. And maybe taken care of his brand-new bruises.

"This doesn't end here, Zim!" He growled, raising his fist in the direction of the house just in case his nemesis was watching, and then stuffed his scraped hands in his pockets, starting to make his way home and musing over the intense events of the day. He was still having a hard time sorting out how he felt about the whole simulation ordeal, so for the moment he allowed the relief to take over the confusion and the still troubled feelings that burdened his chest, easing the irrational anxiety he was still experiencing. Hopefully, after this mess, he would be given some time to clear his head about everything that had happened in the last three weeks.

He raised his eyes towards the darkening sky. The night was falling quickly and the air was getting chill once again. The events had got more and more absurd with every passing day and he didn't want to believe that the madness he had been dealing with would last indefinitely. It had to come to an end, at some point, even if this was _Zim_ he was dealing with. Not even the Invader could go on endlessly like that, or at least he hoped so for the sake of his own mental sanity. Things would have to go back to their weird kind of normal, sooner or later.

His mind went back to the cruel, bloody images of the simulation. Unless that was the beginning of the spiral that would lead them to their real, final battle.

╔ IZ ╗

It turned out that, while things went quiet for a few days, they were still very far from going back to normal. Zim's attitude went back to the same quiet and gloomy one he had showed in the previous days and he kept evading Dib whenever they weren't forced to share a classroom. He avoided the cafeteria like the plague, never stayed behind once the lessons were over, hid in the air ducts during breaks. He did everything he could to avoid attracting attention and, once his skoolmates had got used to his new behaviour, they found it easy to forget that he was even there, now that his voice no longer disturbed their lessons.

Dib, on his part, tried to reach out for the Irken, at times with anger and hatred, others with more peaceful intentions, but none of his approaches seemed to work. The Invader kept shutting him out, refusing to even acknowledge him, let alone talk to him. The teen didn't know what to think. While, on one side, he felt constantly on the edge, waiting for the alien to pull out another plan like the one that had led to his worst, even if simulated, defeat, on the other he couldn't help starting to seriously worry about his rival. Zim wasn't himself and that, whatever the reason behind his change of attitude was, couldn't be a good thing.

Then something else happened, signing a new turn in the course of the events, right when things had slowly started to find a new, shaky balance. Dib and Gaz had walked their way to Hi Skool that morning, since the first had woken up late, causing them to miss the bus. The older teen had stayed up till very late, trying to hack into the Irken's newly strengthen security system without much success for the third night in a row and he had fallen asleep on his keyboard, so exhausted that he hadn't heard the alarm going off. His wake-up call had been a punch on the head from his sister and a hand that had grabbed him and dragged him into the bathroom to shower.

Dib's day had started _very_ badly and everything pushed him to think that it wouldn't get any better, considering that the expression on the girl's face echoed the words about his impending doom she had shouted him as he washed up. However, his gut instinct hadn't prepared him for the scene that waited ahead of them when they finally reached the building, slightly late for the start of the lessons. There was a thick crowd of students and passers-by standing just inside the main gate, with a bunch of police officers trying to keep them out of the way as a stretcher, carrying a black body bag, was being escorted to the coroner's van parked in a corner.

The Membrane siblings stopped right before the Skool wire fencing, following the progressing of the gurney. Gaz's eyes were open for once, a hint of curiosity replacing her eternal frown, while Dib's face was a mix of horror and concern.

"Looks like that we have a murderer to thank for not being late," the girl commented, casually, after a thick moment of silence, resuming her strolling towards the gate. She was a little disturbed, but she also thought that there were very few people among the student body who really deserved to live, so she didn't really care much about whoever had got themselves killed. She was sure that it wasn't any of the aforementioned individuals, since they were all too smart to get killed for any Skool-related reason.

The older teen shot her a look, but didn't comment, just rolling his eyes as he hurried after her, a morbid interest pushing him to want to make his way through the crowd and find out what had exactly happened. So, when Gaz headed straight for the building, he stopped where everyone else was standing, trying to sneak in to have a look, but without much success. The people who had got themselves a spot with just the slightest hint of a sight wouldn't let it go and the ones who, like him, were trying to gain the chance to have a look were incredibly competitive.

In the end, he resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn't get the opportunity to see the scene in first person, so he approached the first familiar face he spotted among the mass, who happened to be one of his former classmates at Skool.

"Zita?" He called, stretching his arm past another boy to be able to touch her shoulder and get her attention. "Hey, Zita!"

The lavender-haired girl turned around to look at him, a mild annoyed look on her face, which only deepened as she realised who had been trying to talk to her. However, she still moved backwards, out of the crowd, to go to stand next to him. Her spot was immediately taken by the boy behind her, which made her scowl for a moment, but she shrugged immediately after. She had seen enough.

"It's _you_ ," she stated, with the same tone she would have used to address something really sticky and disgusting that had got stuck under her shoe. "Let me guess, you want to know what the hell happened here."

"If you don't mind too much," Dib grumbled under his breath, even if he could already tell that she minded all right.

She rolled her eyes, but then shrugged again. "Someone from Hi Skool got murdered. And with that I mean that they've been torn into pieces. They found the torso there." She pointed the spot the crowd was stretched around. "An arm in one of the trash bins in the back yard, the other nailed to a tree across the yard. One leg was in the trash near the bus station and the other…I didn't really get where it was. The head, instead, was hanged upside down above the front entrance. They had got it off already when most of us arrived here, but there's a kid who swears that it was Louis's head." She narrowed her eyes, almost warily. "Wasn't he the guy who used to beat you up?"

The teen blinked at the question, surprised by the news, but then he caught up with what she was most likely trying to imply. He made a face. "Yeah, it was. But I didn't kill him, if that's what you're asking. I didn't like the guy, but that's not a good reason to tear him apart," he protested bringing his hands up, as to defend himself. The last thing he needed was for the rumour of him being responsible being spread around. "Zita, what the hell. I know we aren't exactly friends, but you've known me for years!"

The girl eyed him for a moment, but then the distrust melted away from her eyes. "Yeah, you're too much of a wimp to be capable of something like that," she claimed, her expression going back to her usual intolerant one. "Anyway, I guess we'll know if it's him soon enough. They always send the counsellors to the classes whenever something happens to one of the students. Just in case someone needs to "talk about it", or something like that."

Dib scowled when she stated that he was too weak and cowardly to be able to kill someone, but he avoided to correct her. She would have called him freak if he had started to tell her about how horrible his battles with Zim got at times and, besides, if that was an explanation good enough for him not to be a suspect, then he would roll with it. "Yeah, something like that," he agreed with a brief nod. "Thanks, Zita."

She scoffed and walked away, leaving him glancing at the crowd for a few more moments. Now that he knew what had happened, the curiosity that had made him want to try and gain a spot among it had died down and so, in the end, he just turned on his heels, intending to head inside the building. However, he stopped as his eyes caught a green spot on the roof. Zim was standing there, gloved hands wrapped around the metal railing, fake violet contact lenses fixed on the scene. The alien was wearing the hint of a frown, but there was a calculating look in his irises.

Dib's eyes widened as an epiphany hit him. He should have realised it as soon as he had heard that someone had been killed. His mind brought up the memories of the day Louis had beaten the Irken up, of the dangerous, dead look in his rival's eyes. The alien had promised the bully that he would have paid if he hadn't done as he had ordered. The idiot had chosen not only to ignore the command, but also to strike Zim. He wouldn't be surprised if it had turned out that the guy had been tortured and experimented on before being killed. What puzzled him was why Zim had let the body being found. He could have just made the poor bastard disappear and no one would have ever suspected anything. Instead he had left him, or rather his _pieces_ , spread all over Hi Skool ground, pointing a spotlight over the place and, consequentially, over himself. It wasn't very like his nemesis's modus operandi, but after all lately very few things the other did were really…Zim-like.

In that moment the Invader's eyes met his, realising that he was being watched. The human didn't bother to look away and fake ignorance and instead stared as the Irken hurried to turn around and flee from his spot. He stayed where he was for a minute, just in case his rival decided to come back, but, when the other didn't make another appearance, he sighed and finally headed inside. He had to admit that the alien's demeanour had been making him feel disheartened and he was starting to wonder if his constant bugging would ever get him anywhere. However, what had happened that morning had renewed his determination to make the Invader talk to him again, or at least fight him. He would make another attempt that day, even if he had previously decided to avoid it for once and focus on trying to make Gaz less mad at him instead. He just hoped that it wouldn't be the umpteenth dead end.

╔ IZ ╗

Just as Zita had predicted, a counsellor showed up in Dib's and Zim's shared class during the second morning period. She was the latest hired and it was evident from the encouraging, friendly way in which she kept smiling at the obviously uninterested class. She introduced herself as Ms Acelynn Xander, explaining with as much tact and as little details as possible what had happened to Louis and offering her services if needed.

The teen, as all the rest of his classmates, pretended to listen just not to get scolded by the teacher later and to make sure the woman would be gone as soon as possible. His attention perked up a bit only when she confirmed that the victim was indeed his bully and then he went back to not listening once she started to blather about mourning and fears. His amber eyes wandered to his nemesis's desk, watching the Invader as the latter stared in the void between himself and the head of the girl sat in front of him, with that disturbing, empty look that had become the norm for him.

"Zim?" Ms Xander's voice made them both start as it echoed in the mostly silent class. "Can I talk to you for a moment? Outside?"

Dib watched as the Irken's eyes went huge with surprise and a hint of nervousness. That request was clearly the last thing the other was expecting and he knew how the alien felt because he himself was just as taken aback. For a moment, the insane hope that the woman had seen past the alien's disguise blossomed inside him and he turned to look at her, but the sympathetic expression that still lingered in her features immediately made him discard the idea. No one would be looking so _helpful_ after having suddenly realised that there was a being from outer space sitting in the middle of a bunch of teenagers. He frowned, wondering what she might want with his nemesis, as his gaze followed said alien, who was making his way towards where she was holding the door open for him.

Zim had stiffened when the idiotic woman, with her even more idiotic smile, had called his name. He didn't even have any idea of whom she was, since he hadn't been paying her attention in the slightest. He was more or less aware that she was somehow involved with the body parts he had left spread around the Hi Skool ground, but he didn't really know what her function was. So, for a few, tense moments, he feared that she had somehow figured out that he was the culprit. Which was laughable, because there was no way he had left any trace behind. Both he and the Computer had made sure of it, once he had been done with the human. Every clue of his involvement had been deleted by his superior Irken technology. However, as he made his way to the door, he felt as exposed as he would have been if he had walked across the class looking like he had by the end of the experiments he had carried out on his target. Lab coat covered in blood, gloves and boots slippery with disgusting human body fluids, without disguise.

"It won't take long," the woman assured him as he moved past her and the threshold of the classroom, shutting the door after her. She then stared down at him for a moment, as if she had been evaluating him.

The Invader felt his nervousness growing. Her scrutiny reminded him of one of his instructors at the training area underneath Irk's surface. The Irken had been tall, even if not as much as the Tallest of course, and he had this purple, penetrating eyes that seemed to be able to see through everything and to stare right into his recruits' PAK coding. He fought the instinct to squirm and waited for her to say something else, but, when she didn't, he gathered his courage and decided to break the silence first. "Am I a suspect?" He questioned warily, gloved claws twitching slightly by his sides.

The female human blinked at the question, looking confused for a moment, and then did something he would have never anticipated. She started to _laugh_ , shaking her head, a lock of blond hair falling on her face. "Zim, I'm not a cop, I'm a counsellor. A psychologist. You know what that is, don't you?" She chuckled, clearly thinking that his had been some sort of joke. "Besides, I doubt that anyone in this Skool would be capable of such a terrible murder, don't you agree?" She smiled warmly. "I'm sorry if I made you nervous by asking you to come out here with me."

The Irken crossed his arms on his chest, feeling mocked. He didn't like that woman, he decided, and he wanted to be rid of her as soon as possible. "Of course, I know what that is," he stated making a face, even if it wasn't exactly the truth. He was familiar with the term, but he had never really looked it up properly. He would have to now. However, the fact that she seemed to think of him as just another, innocent human smeet was reassuring. His cover-up was safe. "Whatever. What do you want with Zim, counsellor drone?"

"Call me Ms Xander, Zim. Or even Acelynn, if you prefer," she corrected him kindly, looking slightly amused by the denomination he had used. Then her expression turned more serious. "I exploited this occasion to talk to you, since I already had the intention to do it. You see, one of your teachers has come to my office to report the fact that recently one of his students had been looking a bit…under the weather." She made a pause and searched his face again, only to find a puzzled expression. "He was talking about you, Zim," she clarified with a small sigh. "And he told me that you looked…depressed, for lack of a better word. And I had the same impression when I saw you in class."

The Invader, who had felt confused for a moment when she had stated that she had meant to speak with him even before they met, instantly got defensive once again as she explained what the problem was in her eyes. "Zim is fine," he claimed loudly, taking a small step back, his voice filled with hostility. Irkens didn't get… _depressed_ and they didn't fall under any weather. He was a soldier, a being raised to dominate and conquer. His newly discovered status as an exiled Defective didn't change his past, hadn't wiped away his training. He didn't need any assistance or whatever the weird female was trying to offer him.

Ms Xander let out another soft sigh, but she kept looking at him patiently. "Of course you are," she nodded, compliantly. "But…Why don't you come to my office during lunch break? So we can talk a bit and make sure that it's really true that you're okay?"

The alien narrowed his eyes. "You want to talk to me?" He inquired, suspiciously, pushing himself to stand a little straighter, to gain an inch. "Just talk?"

She nodded. "Yes, Zim, just talk," she reassured him, her smile coming back. "Do you think we can have that happening?"

Zim remained quiet for a moment, considering it. The woman looked very determined to make this conversation happen and he didn't want her to start nosing around his business. He couldn't afford to be discovered, especially now that he had no planet to flee back to, especially not by an adult human. Unlike Dib, people might actually believe her if she had told them that he was an alien and that would have led to him being locked up in a lab, experimented on and dissected. That was something he still didn't want to happen. It was a risk he wouldn't take. So, the best choice was to allow her to have her talk and then make sure she wouldn't bother him ever again.

"I will come to you," he answered in the end, with a small nod, even if some of the reluctance he was feeling was audible in his voice.

The unwillingness, though, seemed not to bother the female human because her smile widened slightly, unsettling him for a moment. The emotion in it, the _kindness_ , was something he wasn't used to. Such a feeling had never been addressed to him. Unless one counted GIR's disastrous attempts to show affection.

"Good. I'll see you during the lunch break then," she nodded, looking satisfied. "By the way, since you'll be skipping lunch, what would you like to eat? I wouldn't want to send you back in class on an empty stomach!"

The Irken stared at her warily once again, wondering if she was clumsily trying to poison him. His mind raced. He wouldn't have been able to just throw away the food as he usually did, while locked in a room with her, so he needed to ask her for something he knew that he could eat without getting sick or having obvious _alien_ allergic reactions. GIR's face popped in his head again, the robot's mouth spelling something with a demented grin. "Waffles," he answered almost reflexively. A safe choice, especially since he was sure that humans didn't put soap in them.

Ms Xander looked slightly perplexed by his choice, but she didn't protest. "I'll have a bunch of those waiting for you then," she simply said, looking ready to take her leave. "I'll see you later, Zim. Have a nice morning."

Zim watched her walking away with a small frown on his face and waited until she had disappeared around the corner, before pulling out his PAK communicator, briefly checking to make sure that the corridor was empty.

"Computer," he called through the device. "I need to know everything about what a "psychologist" is and does, and I need to know before foodening time. It's of _vital_ importance."


	12. Chapter 12

( _(Notes at the end of the chapter))_

* * *

Zim stood before the door he had been pointed by a passing member of the Hi Skool staff. He had been forced to flee inside the air ducts again to prevent Dib from stalking him there. The human had been incredibly annoying after Ms Xander had called him out to talk and persistent in demanding to know what exactly she had wanted from him. He couldn't allow his rival to find out that he was seeing her again, especially now that he knew what a psychologist did.

Apparently, there were beings that could be classified as Defectives even among humans, which was hardly surprising considering how intrinsically _flawed_ mankind was. However, the people of Earth, instead of getting rid of them or locking them away as they used to do in the past times, which was, in the Irken's eyes, the smartest solution, now tried to _cure_ them. Which didn't make sense at all, but apparently the Earthen monkeys believed that it was possible. That was what psychologists and psychiatrists were for. And that had to be the reason why the woman had called him to her office. She had to have somehow recognised him for what he was, or she had to at least suspect it, and now she wanted to see if she could _fix_ him. A ridiculous concept in his opinion, since Irken Defectives were very different from most human ones. He needed to trick her into thinking that he was fine, so that she would lose interest. He didn't want to be stuffed with meds or sectioned into a mental hospital.

With one last hint of hesitation, he pushed the door open, not bothering to knock, and stepped inside the room. The first thing that hit him was how small the office was, with barely enough space for the desk and a filing cabinet. The walls were of a very boring cream colour and the furniture had clearly seen better days, like almost everything else in the building. However, the space was weirdly clean, at least compared to most of the other rooms and that was something that Zim could definitely appreciate. It meant less filthy germs to wash off once back at his base.

The second detail that caught the alien's attention was the _delicious_ , sugary smell that filled the air of the room and that seemed to come from the fluffy golden pile of waffles set on the desk, in front of one of the worn guest chairs. The sweets attracted the Invader's attention so quickly that he almost missed the woman lifting her head from the documents she was reading.

"Oh, Zim, you're here," she beamed friendly, pointing the chair to him. "Take a sit. I hope you'll like the waffles. I put only sugar on them, since I didn't know how you take them."

He complied, picking up the fork that was set next to the plate and poking at the food. They smelled much better than GIR's and they looked better too. They seemed to be of the right colour, for once, and this was very promising. "I said I would come," he mumbled distractedly, as he took a small piece of waffle, sniffing it before putting it in his mouth. Definitely not toxic, even if the taste still didn't satisfy him as Irken snacks did, but it was close enough.

Ms Xander watched him with a hint of warm amusement and then set down her pen, turning her full attention to him. "I'm glad to see that you like them," she commented as she noticed his expression lighting up slightly, receiving a shrug in response instead of a verbal answer. She didn't let it dishearten her though. She was used to difficult patients. Most of the teens she had to deal with usually were, and some shared Zim's unwillingness to talk about their problems or even admit that they had one. For now, her goal was to ascertain if said issue was there and, in that case, persuade him to keep seeing her. "So, would like to tell me how you are feeling, Zim?"

The alien's eyes shot up from his lunch, the hostility coming back on his otherwise mostly blank expression. "Fine. Zim told you before," he shot back, his body stiffening. There it went. She was trying to verify his Defective status. "I don't need counselling."

Instead of being taken aback or irritated by his refusal, the woman chuckled. "That's for me to decide, if we want to be honest here," she pointed out almost playfully, but then she rested her hands on the desk, her expression sobering. "Let's make a deal, Zim. You talk to me for these forty minutes we have and, if once the time is up you feel like I've wasted your time, I'll never ask you to come back again. If, instead, you find that talking with me has been good, we arrange another meeting. How does that sound?"

Zim met her eyes across the desk, crossing his arms on his chest, waffles forgotten for a moment. It seemed a dumb deal. He could have always lied at the end of the given time, if he had chosen not to see her again, which was his intention. But, after all, humans in general weren't smart, with very few exceptions. Better this way. He would get rid of her far more easily than he had anticipated.

"I will take your "deal", counsellor drone," he claimed, trying to sound confident. "But don't expect Zim to accept more than that."

" _Acelynn_ ," Ms Xander corrected him. First names would work better with the kind of patient the teen in front of her seemed to be. It would delete some of the distance he was already trying to put between them. "I didn't expect more from you. Now, will you answer my question?" She paused for a moment, before adding: "No, wait. Allow me to reformulate it. I've been told that you've been acting differently in the last couple of weeks. You haven't denied it, so I'm going to assume that it's correct." She looked at him for a sign of assent but got nothing. "Let me ask you this: has something happened in the last period that has influenced your behaviour?"

At the question, the Irken's antennae lowered under his wig, pressing themselves against his skull, dejected. He considered lying for a moment, but she had that look on her face again, the one that reminded him of his instructor. Her irises were blue, not violet, but they were just as penetrating. If he had lied, she would have known. "Yes, something happened," he forced himself to confirm, reluctantly. He wouldn't say another word on the subject, though. No matter how hard she would press.

The woman nodded slowly. "Alright. Let's leave it there," she spoke softly. She had briefly considered trying to ask for more details, but she had soon realised that such questioning would have just pushed Zim to shut her out even more. She would go back to the mysterious issue once he would have understood that she wasn't the enemy. "Now, tell me. Do you have friends? At Hi Skool? Or out of here?"

The Invader's expression turned perplexed at the unexpected change of subject. What kind of tactic was that? Was she trying to confuse him? Foolish creature. He wouldn't fall for her cheap tricks. "Zim doesn't need friends," he stated, feeling a hint of irritation, before remembering what he had learnt about humans during one of his first days at Skool. It wasn't normal on that planet not have connections. His eyes widened slightly. "But I have some," he hurried to correct himself, forcing a terribly fake, innocent grin. "Of course I have. I'm a normal human teen."

The counsellor raised an eyebrow at him. "Zim, having troubles with interacting with others doesn't make you a freak, are you aware of this?" She asked soothingly, misunderstanding his sudden show of nervousness. "I know that kids can be harsh if you're a little different from them, and adults too, but the problem is _theirs_ , not yours."

"Really?" The alien asked, squinting slightly at her, as to grasp whether she was playing him or not. She looked serious, so he decided that her words could be trusted. However, he was still afraid to expose himself, so he didn't change his version. "But I have friends. Sort of."

"For example?" Was the encouraging suggestion to continue.

Zim hesitated for a moment, thinking about the individuals he could have labelled with such a definition credibly, even if they weren't really his friends. "There's GIR, my…dog. And the Dib, even if he's more my nemesis," he answered in the end. It was a quite short list, but it should do. He had thought of adding the Computer too, but humans weren't advanced enough in the field of artificial intelligences. Besides, if Keef had been enough, back then, so Dib would do now. All the Skool seemed persuaded that they were very friendly with each other, when it was the exact opposite. His rival was the perfect cover-up. Not to mention that he enjoyed the _irony_ in the fact.

"I…see," Ms Xander nodded, just the slightest hint of hesitation in her voice. "Loner" was the perfect word to describe the kid in front of her and she was no longer surprised that he had got gloomier and gloomier, since whatever fact was troubling him had happened. He most likely didn't have anyone to talk to. "So, am I right when I assume that you like spending time with them?"

The Irken made a face at the question, his mind wandering between his battles with the teen and the messes that GIR made daily. "The Dib mostly fights with Zim. As for GIR…He can be useful at times," he opted to say after a moment of silence. "He helps me out, even if he acts crazy most of the time. But he gets the job done. At times."

The counsellor took a mental note to go back to this Dib guy later and focused instead on the dog. Many people turned their affection on their pets when they couldn't get it from other human beings. The animals were a source of comfort and so it had to be for Zim. She would have to ask him about his parents, but, since that was usually a difficult subject, she would keep it for later on. Perhaps what had happened involved the teen's family. "Why don't you tell me about you and GIR? What do you two do together? And how he's…"useful" to you?"

The suspicion came back in the Invader's expression, as he wondered if she suspected what he was and was trying to get the details of his mission out of him, but then he considered how she had said "useful" and remembered that she was supposed to be competent but _dumb_. He decided that she just thought of him as a dysfunctional human smeet who involved his pet in weird activities. He would let her keep her assumptions.

"GIR loves watching stupid shows on TV and I join him at times," he started to tell. "He also gets super excited about waffles and sammiches and tacos. We go on…trips together. For example, there was this one time, a few years ago, when we went to a near city…"

Before he could realise it, he found himself rambling about all the misadventures he and GIR had faced, starting from when they had got lost because the robot had removed the amazing guidance chip he had made for him. Of course, he did his best to make his sidekick sound like an Earthen dog and not an alien talking robot and replaced the planets they had visited together with the first random Earth countries that came to his mind. He also tried to focus on the smallest episodes, and not the ones that involved his numerous plans to take over the planet, just to be safe. He couldn't have the woman suspect anything or he would be even more doomed than he already was.

However, despite the caution he kept applying to his words and the a few slips he accidentally made, he unconsciously relaxed slightly and lost most of his mistrust towards the woman's intentions as he went on talking. She was listening to him, really _listening_ , taking in every word attentively, making small comments in the right places and nodding with purpose. Her blue eyes seemed to see only him, as if nothing else mattered. No one had ever listened to him like that. Surely not his Tallest, who most likely hadn't really heard a word of what he told them during his calls, aside from the ones they could use to mock him. Not most of the other Irkens he had interacted with, not his human classmates or the teachers. Not GIR, who seemed unable to listen by default, or his Computer, most of the times. Perhaps the only one who had given him such undivided attention had been Skoodge, back when they were training together. And Dib, when he needed to grasp information about his plans or that one time when he had told him about Irk, over two weeks before, as they travelled the solar system together.

Zim didn't know how he felt about the fact, but he couldn't deny that it was _good_ to be seen and heard, to be valued and thought as important. To be the centre of someone's intense attention. The closest experience to the one he was having now were his battles against his rival, but this was different. Ms Xander wasn't an enemy he had to best or of whom he had to be suspicious. She was there offering support and benevolence, which were pretty much alien concepts to him. He _liked_ it, even if he didn't really want to admit it. It helped the emptiness in his chest, making it feel less cold, less aching. If this was how humans tried to fix their Defectives, it wasn't as bad as he had pictured it. He still thought of it as useless, but it wasn't awful. He could have got used to it. Suddenly, the idea of allowing the woman another conversation didn't look so horrible anymore.

"Your dog is seriously something, Zim," the counsellor commented, once he had finished to tell her about yet another of GIR's shenanigans. "I'd really like to meet him one day." She smiled slightly, before glancing at the clock. "Now. I'd love to hear more, but our time is almost up, so…It means you have to make your decision. Will you accept to come and see me again? Remember that, even if you agree, you can stop the sessions whenever you want. This is a _safe_ space for you and what you tell me stays in this office. No one has to know that you talk to me either, unless you want them to. And, while I'll have to ask you questions, you mostly control the conversation and everything else in our meetings. In exchange, I'll ask you to be as sincere as possible and to trust me to know how to help you. These are the terms of our work together." She intertwined her fingers together. "I'll be frank with you, Zim. I have no idea of what happened to you, but I believe that you could benefit from some counselling. It doesn't have to be me, specifically. I can find you another psychologist, if you prefer. As long as you accept to talk to someone."

The Irken found himself listening to Ms Xander just as carefully as she had been listening to him earlier. His antennae perked up slightly when she told him that he would have had almost all the control during their interactions. It put him in a position of power, especially considering that she was bound to keep secret whatever he told her, unless he allowed her to divulge it. He was aware that there were exceptions to that "therapist-patient confidentiality" thing, his Computer had included a thorough explanation in the information it had collected for him, but, as long as he avoided those subjects, he would be safe on that side. Perhaps he should give this counselling experience a try. It was what was the most far away from Irken costumes, but he had been abandoned on an alien planet, waiting for his fate to be taken out of his hands. If the female human sat in front of him could give him any tool or benefit he could exploit, then he should take his chances with her. Besides, he _really_ liked how she listened to him.

"I have terms too," he claimed, after a long minute of silence, watching her reactions carefully. "You have to be my counsellor drone. No one else. And once I have decided to stop seeing you, you'll leave me alone forever. There will be consequences if you don't."

The woman nodded at his words, even if there was a hint of amusement in her eyes. She wasn't taking his threat seriously, but then, no one ever did. "Alright, Zim. I'll accept your terms and to be your "counsellor drone" if you accept mine and come to see me as often as I deem necessary," she answered extending a hand toward him. "And you call me Acelynn. Deal?"

The alien stared at her hand for a split second before reaching out to shake it. "Yes, you have a deal with Zim. Feel honoured by it, I don't do this often," he stated, not sharing her cheerful satisfaction. She looked like she thought she had won. She clearly had no idea that he only intended to use her. Good. It would have made things easier for him. "So, when should I come to see you again, couns…Acelynn-human?"

The counsellor pulled out her agenda. "Tomorrow is Saturday, so I'd say on Monday. We can meet during lunch break again." She glanced at the now empty plate. "I'll get you more waffles. Sounds good?" Her eyes moved back to him. "Also, Zim, I'd like to ask you to do something for me. Like a…task of some sort. Like homework."

Zim squinted at her suspiciously. "A task?" He repeated, carefully. That wasn't in the deal. She hadn't said that he would have to do things for her in exchange for her services.

"Yes, a task. It's not compulsory, but it will help you progressing," she hurried to explain, seeing that he was starting to close off again. She had to be more careful with her words. The kid seemed to be very easy to paranoia and he also didn't have a complete grasp of metaphorical meanings. "From time to time, I'll give you _suggestions_ , small tasks to do in-between our talks. You don't have to carry them out if you don't feel like to, but it would be better for you if you did." She smiled again, trying to look reassuring. "For example, this time I'd like you to do something fun with GIR in the weekend, so that you can tell me about it on Monday. And I'd also like for you to talk to Dib, since you mentioned that you've been avoiding him in the last few days."

The Invader nodded at the explanation, even if he still looked slightly puzzled. He didn't see how things like the ones the female human had just suggested could help him, but if she didn't ask anything too annoying or that could compromise him, he could try and comply. "The first thing Zim can do," he conceded carefully. Then he made a face. "The second would mess with my plans."

He had decided to keep his distances from his rival, at least when he wasn't putting his plans into action, so that the human wouldn't find out what was going on with him. He couldn't predict what the teen would have done if he had learnt about his Defective and exile status. Dib could have decided that he wasn't a threat worth of his attention anymore and forget about him. Or he could have exploited the knowledge to get rid of him once and for all, perhaps even delivering him to the Empire in exchange for Earth's freedom from future invasions. Neither of those options was acceptable.

Ms Xander sighed. "It doesn't have to be a long conversation," she insisted, patiently. "Maybe you could just tell him about your plans for the weekend. Something as easy and harmless as that. What do you think?"

The unwilling expression stayed on the alien's face. "I will think about it. But no promises," he claimed, stubbornly.

"That's good enough for me, Zim. Progress comes in baby steps," she claimed, standing up. "So, I'll see you on Monday. Have fun with GIR."

Zim didn't care to give an answer, but simply marched out of the office, heading back towards the wing of the building where the classrooms were. He had only a few minutes to get to his own, but he didn't rush. His mind was still locked on the arrangement he had just made with the woman, trying to wrap itself around it. From most points of view, it still seemed something he could have exploited, also to gain information on how the human mind was supposed to work. However, there was a part of him that was horrified by the fact that he had accepted to work in such close contact with an inferior being as Ms Xander, potentially accepting to show her parts of himself that might be seen as weaknesses. And he wasn't even doing it for the mission, since he didn't have one anymore in the first place. However, he reasoned with himself, his aim for now was survival and, if these conversations could help him achieving better results, then he shouldn't refuse them just because they were unconventional tools.

He reached the door of the classroom just as the bell started to ring. This was another of those decisions he had taken and on which he didn't want to dwell too much. If he came to regret it, he would face the consequences, but only when they would present themselves.

╔ IZ ╗

This time, when Zim failed to show up at the cafeteria for lunch, Dib didn't go looking for him, but instead he took a seat with his sister to eat his lunch. Gaz didn't even acknowledge him, which told him that she was still a bit mad about him making her miss the bus that morning, but she didn't kick his ass off the chair, a fact that he decided to see as a good sign. He ate a bit of his food slowly, watching her doing the same as she played her videogame, her eyes locked on the screen and telling him that they wanted to stay there. Still, he decided to ignore the silent warning and, in the end, worked up the courage to address her.

"Did the counsellors come to your class too this morning?" He questioned, testing the ground, but it turned out to be the wrong thing to do because the frown on the girl's face instantly deepened at the sound of his voice.

"Dib, if you're planning to disturb me with your idiotic questions and words, cease it this instant or I'll make you pay," she threatened, without sparing him a glance. She didn't need to, the tone of her voice was terrifying enough. "Your games with Zim will look like lots of fun once I'll be done with you. It's a promise."

He swallowed a bit, nodding fervently and knowing that she would carry her words out if he gave her a reason to, but he still didn't give up on his attempt to make a conversation. "I think it was Zim. The one who killed Louis, I mean. I'm pretty certain it was him," he tried again, hoping that the subject would be a better choice than his first one. "He was on the roof this morning, watching the scene, but he fled as soon as he noticed that I had spotted him. Besides, he had told Louis that he would regret messing with him. The day when he, you know, sort of defended me."

Gaz didn't hit him or cut him off as he spoke, appearing to be paying attention instead. She still would have preferred focusing on her game instead of listening to her brother's rambling, but at least he was giving her some news she might actually be interested in. Not that she was surprised to hear what he had said. As soon as she had learnt who had been targeted and how he had been killed, her first guess on the culprit's identity had been their resident alien.

"It sounds like something he would do," she commented with a small shrug, voice flat. "Exaggerated and theatrical enough. Even if I'm surprised that he's left the evidence of the crime out in the open. I thought that he was getting smarter, considering how he tricked you with his little simulation, but apparently he's back being dumb."

Dib made a face at the last statement. When he had told Gaz about Zim's latest plan she had laughed in his face and then she had, surprisingly, admitted that the scheme was a good one, too good to be true. And in fact it had turned out to be some sort of bad prank. For that reason, according to her, he should have realised that it was fake since the very start. He had avoided insisting too much on the subject, not feeling like getting insulted while he was still shaken by the experience, but he deeply disagreed with her. He thought that his rival was a moron, but he also believed that his sister was wrong thinking that the Irken was no threat to the Earth. Zim had already proven her wrong in a few, but relevant occasions, the simulation being only the last of them.

"I don't think he'd risk compromising himself for no reason, Gaz," he talked back, shaking his head. "If he chose to let us know what he's done, or at least to let everyone know that it happened, he must have had some sort of reason. Maybe it's a stupid one, but it must be important in his eyes."

The girl shrugged again. "You're the alien expert," she claimed, even if she was clearly mocking him. "And he's your obsession anyway. You should ask him, if you'll ever manage to make him talk to you again. That's the best way to see who's right between you and me."

The teen shot her a glare this time, unable not to react to the hidden provocation. She wasn't taking him seriously, as per usual, and she was clearly implying that she had to be right. She had no doubt on the fact. He clenched his fingers around his fork.

"I'll make him talk to me, Gaz, _today_. Just wait and see," he stated with more confidence than he had, but it didn't matter. He had accepted her challenge and he wouldn't lose. Not this time too. He would prove her wrong, for once, and she would be forced to admit that she had been underestimating the whole situation. After all, on one thing she was indeed right. When it came to Zim, he was the expert.

╔ IZ ╗

Once again, Dib found himself spending his afternoon lessons watching his nemesis. The Irken, as per usual, wasn't paying attention to the teacher, but his gaze looked less empty now. There was a thoughtful note in it and the teen automatically assumed that the alien had to be scheming some other plan. Whether to destroy Earth or to humiliate him again, he couldn't tell, but he was sure that something heavy and _crucial_ had to be on the other's mind.

Zim, from his part, was distractedly aware of his rival's eyes locked on him, his mind still whirling around the conversation with his new counsellor. He had quickly solved the issue of what to do with GIR in the weekend. During the first in-between lessons break, he had called the robot, asking him what he would have liked to do for fun if he had been given the chance to choose. His sidekick had said something, between a screech and a nonsensical comment, about an amusement park. Apparently he had seen it on television and now he wanted to visit one at all costs.

The next thing the Invader had done had been contacting his Computer and asking it to locate the best amusement parks of the universe and he had found out that there was a whole planet built with the purpose of constantly offering that kind of entertainment. It was distant enough from the borders of the Empire, so it was safe for him, and it wasn't too far from Earth. An hour or so, with a space jump. The only bad side was that it was a bit expensive, but he would work around it, somehow. And if he hadn't managed, he would have made the sacrifice to spend some of his hard-earned space monies for the sake of fulfilling the task he had been assigned.

Once that first issue had been dealt with, his mind had moved forward to the next one, which was the _crucial_ dilemma that had occupied him for the rest of the school day. Namely, whether to talk or not to Dib. His reason told him that he shouldn't. He had decided a strategy on how to deal with the human and he should stick to it. It was the best way to keep his rival from finding out about his precarious situation. On the other hand, though, he hated the idea of not completing his task. His training pushed him to follow through it, to show that he was capable enough to accomplish it without being compromised or affected. Besides, while Ms Xander was just a human, she was taller than him and, in the Earthen social scale, she was above the role he had chosen to impersonate on the planet. So, she was his superior in more than one way and, even if hers had been a suggestion and not an order, he still felt an inner obligation, dictated by his PAK instincts, to fulfil it.

That latter consideration grew stronger and stronger in his mind as the time passed and, by the end of the last lesson, he had persuaded himself that, for this time, he would comply with his counsellor's second request too. This way she would have no reason to doubt that he was capable of keeping his side of their deal and would keep hers in turn.

That was the reason why, when Dib lifted his head from where he had lowered it to put his books away after the ring of the bell, he found the alien who had been avoiding him like the plague for days staring at him expectantly. The teen was so caught off guard that he remained paralysed and speechless for a long moment. He had been resigned to the fact that he would have to hunt his rival down to force him to have a talk and the idea that the other might have, for some obscure reason, come to him willingly hadn't crossed his mind.

Exploiting his nemesis's astonishment, Zim took control of the conversation, just as he had planned to do, preventing the human from starting to ask questions he didn't want to answer. "I'm feeling generous, so I decided to give you a warning. GIR and I will be off planet for the weekend. We're leaving tonight. I will program my security system to kill whoever attempts to enter my base, in any way, so you've better not try anything, worm child." His rival opened his mouth to speak, but he didn't allow him. "Moreover, Zim will allow the Dib to ask _one_ question. So, choose carefully, human, because you won't be permitted anything more."

The teen closed his parted lips, swallowing the sentences he had been about to speak and the inquiries he had been about to make, finding that his words were being reined by the alien's terms. One question that the Irken would answer before he went back giving him the silent treatment. How was he supposed to choose only _one_ when he had a thousand? The most obvious thing to ask would what Zim was planning to do next about the planet, what his next scheme was. Or there was the much more general, just as important "What the hell is wrong with you?". Yet, he had the feeling that his nemesis would have evaded the latter, giving him a mostly empty answer. He needed something more specific. He could have asked the Invader why he had been avoiding him or why he had come to tell him those things. Or what the counsellor had wanted from him. However, in the end, he didn't choose any of those, his discussion with Gaz coming back to him. It was his chance.

"Why did you do all that to Louis? The torture and the tearing his corpse into pieces? Exposing him for everyone to see?" He asked, lowering his voice in the unlikely case that someone was eavesdropping. He wanted an answer, he didn't want to expose the alien for once. Besides, his sister was right about another fact. The world was a better place without the idiotic bully in it.

Zim was a bit surprised by the choice of question, but his eyes darkened almost immediately with a deep emotion that was a mix of hatred and desolation. "I didn't tear his _corpse_ apart, worm child. He was alive at the time. And no one mocks or walks all over Zim," he declared in a cold, low voice. "And if they do, they must be ready to face the consequences." His fake violet irises flew towards the window. "As for why I left his filthy remains for you pathetic beings to see…Zim made an example out of him. So, you know what's coming for you, if you show such an attitude in my presence again."

Dib was tempted to point out that it was a bit useless since no one knew that he was the responsible, but then he thought better about it. Perhaps it wasn't necessary. The only thing for which everyone used to know Louis was his bullying acts. His body had been found on Hi Skool ground, so at least the doubt that his death could be some sort of vendetta would have surely spread, especially among the other bullies. Whether willingly or not, Zim had done a service to the community, in his own perverse, bloody way, by getting rid of the guy.

"I guess it makes sense. Sort of," he said in the end, not really knowing what to answer. A small shiver had run down his spine as the Irken had stated that Louis had been alive when the alien had torn him into pieces and the tone in which the admission had been spoken hadn't helped. It made it extremely easy to picture the Invader covered in blood, smirking down at a mutilated, screaming body. His rival was being much creepier than his usual standards. "Uh, space boy? One more thing."

Zim had started to turn away after the human had made his comment, but stopped when the latter called him back, not without a slightly annoyed glare. "What now? I said one question."

"I wasn't going to ask another," the teen defended himself, raising his hands. "I just wanted to say…thanks, for the other day. With Louis." It was the second time in two weeks he thanked the alien and damn, it felt weird. "I know that you didn't really do it for me, _again_ , but you still saved me from a bad beating." He then rolled his eyes. "Even if you did a great job at traumatising me yourself immediately after." He had tried to covey as much irritation as possible in his last statement, not wanting Zim to know how truly affected he had been by the simulation, but that didn't spare him from the new wave of cold dread that spread in his stomach at the memory. "I'll get back at you for that, alien scum. I swear."

The Irken eyed him as if he had suddenly grown a second head hearing the "thank you", reflecting almost exactly how Dib felt in that moment, and seemed to dismiss the final threat as irrilevant. "See you Monday, Dib-beast," he mumbled after a moment, suspiciousness colouring his words, but then he marched towards the door and out of the room without looking back.

The human sighed. Not the kind of conversation he had hoped for, but at least he had got enough information to prove Gaz wrong and tell her that Zim had deliberately left Louis's parts hanging around. Also, he now knew that he had to keep an eye on the alien's base…without physically approaching it. If these strengthened defensive systems were as efficient as the improved security ones, then he really didn't want to be anywhere too close to the building.

* * *

Hello everyone!

I rushed a bit to get this chapter ready, but I wanted to post it today because, well...It's Invader Zim 17th anniversary! Since I didn't have time to prepare something specific for the occasion, I thought that I could at least update to celebrate ^^

Also, yeah, I actually moved the notes at the end of the chapter as I said I would do. Just so you can read the whole thing without my words conditioning you xD  
Aside from that, as I might have mentioned to some of you, the general mood gets lighter in this chapter and in the ones that will come after. There will still be some dark elements, because well, it's Invader Zim we're talking about, but I'll spare your emotions for a while xD also because I want to focus on the main theme if this first arc, meaning Zim's "therapy" (you'll tell me if it's the right term!), which is also the idea that pushed be to write this story in the first place. I'm eager to learn what you think about the whole situation!  
About Ms Xander. As I might have mentioned, she's gonna be a supporting but still background character. She's gonna have a big role in this part of the story, but mostly indirectly. I want to keep her on the sideways, because I pretty much prefer focusing on canon characters than on OCs, when possible. Still, if you have some observations/suggestions, let me know. She's sort of base of my personal experience with therapy and so is her way to approach Zim. I thought that using real life experience could make the whole ordeal more believable. And I needed her to be competent xD I like to think that her attitude, which is different from the one of most humans Zim has met so far, can sort of push Zim to choose to work with her, together with the other "appealing" sides of the idea that I mentioned in the chapter. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject as the thing develops!  
Also, I gotta say that I *almost* feel bad for Dib. Everyone is sort of walking over him in this chapter too xD  
Btw, I've noticed that I didn't really put much descriptive details (at least when it comes to describe settings and stuff), so I'm sorta trying to change it. That's the reason why you might start to find random details about the characters' surroundings from time to time ^^" Don't mind me, I'm just experimenting with my writing style!

Thanks to all the people who are reading this story. It's always very reassuring seeing the counters going up! ^^ And of course my deepest gratitude goes to my reviewers. Your comments are what keeps me posting, guys!

 **guestrev:** I'm so glad to hear that you've enjoyed the last chapter. I was actually trying to offer some insight about the simulation and it's good to know that I managed it. Also, I do find the idea of Zim getting counselling quite interesting too, so I hope you will like my attempt at that!  
I know that how I wrote Zim, during and after the simulation, is disturbing. But well, he's supposed to be, now more than ever. And Dib is pretty much his favourite target because he's the only one left he can turn to. I know the feeling xD I'd really like to see Zim vaporising Earth too, but well, it would sort of kill the plot, so I'm not going there this time!  
Thank you for your kind words and review, it was super appreciated as always! I hope you'll keep enjoying my work!

Also, I might take a bit longer for the next chapter, because I'll be busy during Easter holidays and I really need to start studying harder for my approaching exams! I apologise in advance!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encourage. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

I hope you have enjoyed the chapter!


	13. Chapter 13

Craic Spor turned out to be much more than what promised by the description the Computer had offered. At first the whole trip appeared like a nightmare since, by the time they had reached their destination, Zim was persuaded that his staying on the planet would have made him even more miserable than he already was. GIR had started to screech loudly and relentlessly since when the Irken had announced that they would take a trip to the best amusement park of the Milky Way and he hadn't stopped till the Voot Cruiser had landed in the planet's vast, multi-story parking lot. That had effectively given the Invader one of the worst headaches he had ever experienced, beat only by the ones caused by his allergic reaction to the Earth beans. The alien knew that it was just his sidekick's way to express excitement, but that awareness hadn't made the sound any less unpleasant to his sensitive antennae.

The pain in his head had just worsened when he had realised that he would have to stand in line, surrounded by a thick, multicolour mass of smelly, chattering aliens for who knew how long. By the time he was half way through it, Zim was ready to grab the jumping GIR next to him and drag them both back to Earth. However, he fought the impulse and forced himself to endure that torture for two reasons. First of all, he was there to fulfil a task, which he had stated he could have easily carried out. Secondly, his robot would have cried for hours if he had taken him away without allowing him to try at least one of the rides. He didn't really want to deal with _that_. An unhappy GIR was far worse than a crazily enthusiastic one.

Things started to look better when it was finally their turn to get the entrance ticket. Not only the Irken discovered that they had been standing in line only for an hour and not for days as he had thought, but he also found out that his sidekick was short enough to enter free and he to pay the reduced ticket, since they both got mistaken for kids. Zim initially got extremely mad, hearing himself being called "short", but he stopped when he realised that his lack of height was actually serving him well for once and his offended protests turned into a maniacal laugh as the two of them passed the gate. Perhaps those two days wouldn't be that bad, after all.

The amusement park was even more crowded than the waiting area, but its surface was so extended that it was pretty easy to move around. The Invader made sure to download the full map of the place into GIR's memory, so that they could navigate it without getting too lost and, especially, so that they could choose the rides they wanted to try. Then they immersed themselves in the colourful chaos of aliens and activities.

From then on, time literally flew. Zim bullied his way on every single merry-go-round and ride either he or GIR set their eyes on, threatening whoever tried to tell him that they were too short or tiny to get on. He also used his PAK tools and his Elite training to win the best prizes at the game stands, causing the wrath of a few visitors, who accused him of cheating. One of the discussions resulted in a real brawl after the Irken stated that, if the other guy was allowed to use his "disgusting, fat, flaccid tentacles thingies", then he could use his spider legs. The fight ended with a couple of broken bones on the Invader's side and his opponent having said tentacles tied painfully together in a messy tangle of limbs. GIR cheered for his master from the sidelines, laughing with merriment at the show taking place before him as he devoured the sweets they had previously bought, more or less raiding the food stands.

There were some other accidents along the way, like Zim being thrown off a few of those rides he should have been on, another couple of fights and three allergic reactions. However, the damage that was done wasn't anything that the Irken's PAK couldn't fix and the pain wasn't enough to demolish the general enjoyment. There also were the few times when GIR accidentally broke some of the attractions in the heat of his excitement, forcing the two of them to spend time repairing them not to have to pay a fare they couldn't afford. And the unexplained incident in the trans-dimensional mirror house, which ended with a few people being eaten alive by a monster appeared out of nowhere. All those situations, though, left the two of them more or less unharmed and they were forgotten in a matter of minutes.

At one point, Zim left his robot on a light speed ride and locked himself in one of the virtual reality facilities, which promised a full experience of galactic conquest. He emerged from it three hours later, triumphant and feeling every inch of an Irken Invader once again, after having _destroyed_ the galaxy he was supposed to conquer, together with the armies of all the other players. He was addressed hateful glares from every direction, but he completely ignored them. He hadn't felt so good since before finding out the truth about his status and his Tallest's real intentions. His mind was too occupied by all the distractions the amusement park had to offer to focus on the still persisting emptiness in his chest.

So, he ignored the murderous looks and the insults and marched through the crowd to collect his screaming sidekick and go trying the stand where you could have fun tearing apart a peculiar alien specimen, which was able to survive and stitch themselves together no matter how many limbs or organs you tore off and out of them. Moreover, their blood seemed to be of a particularly attractive shade of purple and it also tasted sweet. How to resist to such an awesomely gory sugar-flavoured experience?

 **╔ IZ ╗**

Having to go back to Earth made neither Zim nor GIR happy. The robot had to be forcefully dragged off the ride he was clinging to and then out of the park, back to the Cruiser, and he kept screaming and crying the whole time. His bad mood, however, dissolved as soon as he was shoved inside the spaceship, as his attention was suddenly occupied with the task of fitting in the vehicle all the things they had won at the stands and all the food they had bought. One particular prize was too big to be carried inside the ship, so they had to lock the tractor beam on it once they had taken off and carry it like that the whole way back.

The Invader, on his part, was astonished by how effective that "having fun" experience had been to help him feeling, if not less worthless, at least less afflicted by that awareness. Irkens almost never did things to enjoy themselves, mostly because they didn't have much free time. When they weren't performing their assigned tasks, they were participating in the meetings called by the Tallest and those were, more or less, the only real form of entertainment they were allowed to experience. They had a few games and facilities for virtual realities, like the one he had tried of Craic Spor, but they were hardly used. Most of his people also enjoyed blowing things and beings up, but even for that there wasn't always an occasion. Perhaps the only ones who could take breaks and have all the fun they wanted were Red and Purple because, being the Tallest, they could do whatever passed through their minds, if it didn't go against the will of the Control Brains. It was also to be said that Irkens were mostly happy with invading, so there wasn't much need for any other form of fun. Still, Zim had to admit to himself that he could have got used to it.

"Can we come back sometimes, master? _Pleeeease?_ " GIR asked, in the most pleading tone his vocal circuits were capable off, dragging each word of the question. "It was soooo much fun! Better than sammiches! Better than Monkey show!"

The Irken shot him a look as he hit the space jump button. It wasn't such a bad idea, all considered, and they should exploit their freedom while they still had it. Besides, if his future plans for fake Earth destruction went as well as his first one had, he would deserve a prize for his accomplishments. "If you behave and help Zim out, we might come back sooner than you think," he answered after a moment, giving a small nod, the shadow of a smirk playing on his face.

His answer was met by a screech of joy and a hug that almost choked the Invader to death. Then his sidekick threw himself into singing a variation of his "Doom song", replacing the word "doom" with "fun". Luckily for the alien, the trip to Earth wasn't going to take six months that time.

Zim rolled his magenta orbs, but the smirk on his face widened slightly. He was feeling a bit more like himself for the first time in weeks. The mood wouldn't last, he knew it, but for now it was enough. His counsellor drone was definitely onto something when she had suggested him to spend some fun time with his robot. Perhaps she was less of a moron than he had initially thought.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

Dib's eyes widened when what looked like a huge plush, almost as tall as half of the alien's base, fell from the sky and landed in the middle of the garden. He had spent most of the weekend keeping an eye on the eerie building from outside the fence, after his attempts to get inside had miserably failed. Apparently the sensors had been set to shoot to disintegrate everything that had even just one molecule of his DNA, as he had found out by throwing random objects inside the yard, while a force field kept everyone else from opening the door or the windows. He had determined the latter fact by sending a random, passing kid to go and knock. The poor guy had received a non-lethal but still painful shock as soon as he had tried to touch the surface of the base, but he had remained otherwise unharmed and especially _alive_. Zim's deadly weapons seemed to be targeting him in particular.

When the monstrosity fell before his wide open eyes, it was past midnight and he had been considering heading home, since it was late and there had been no trace of his rival till that moment. He gaped at the object for several moments, trying to make out what exactly it was supposed to represent, without success. It was some sort of hideous alien creature he had never seen before and he honestly wasn't sure if he wanted to know what exactly he was looking at.

"GIR! I said to _operate_ the tractor beam _carefully_ , not to drop the cursed thing from twenty metres in the air!" Zim's voice echoed in the empty road, causing the teen's eyes to move away from the plush and to lock on where the Voot Cruiser had landed inside the now open roof. "And how am I supposed to fit _that_ inside the base?! I knew there was a reason why I wanted to launch it in the sun!"

His reproach was followed by the robot's mad giggles and then the two came into view. GIR was rolling mid-air, holding what looked like silver cotton candy, next to an annoyed-looking Invader, who had his arms crossed over his chest and was wearing a weird cap peak around his head. His antennae were twitching in mild irritation, but he looked much better than he had in days. His eyes were less dull and his body language livelier, even if the hollowness that had characterised him in the last period still lingered in his stance.

In that moment, the Irken realised that he was being watched and his head snapped in Dib's direction, his startled expression shifted back to irritability as soon as he realised that it was just his nemesis. He grabbed a still cackling GIR by one foot and used his PAK legs to climb down the building and the plush standing in front of it. Behind his shoulders, the roof closed, hiding the spaceship and its contents from view.

"I shouldn't be surprised to find you here, filthy creature!" He accused, as soon as his boots were firmly planted on the soil again. He squinted at the human, warily. "What are you doing near my base? Didn't I tell you to leave it be if you didn't want to risk a horrible death?"

"You told me not to try to get _inside_ , and I didn't. I'm outside," Dib pointed out, making a face. However, his attention was almost immediately stolen once again by the giant toy. "What the hell is that supposed to be? Are you trying to repeat the whole Peepi disaster? Have you forgotten how that ended?" He tilted his head, narrowing one eye, in the attempt of making sense of the forms of the object. "And that thing isn't cute or whatever. It's even hard to understand what I'm exactly looking at!"

"That's not a monster of doom, you ignorant pig!" The alien exclaimed, incredulous. Why had the moron even thought of it? He turned around to look at the monstrosity and, after a moment, he had to confess to himself that he could tell where the other was coming from. Not that he would admit it aloud. "It's obviously a…a…uh…huge _thingy_!"

"A huuuuge plushie!" GIR cut in, starting to bounce excitedly around the object. "The master won it for me at the amusement park!"

" _GIR_!" Zim squealed, horrified. He couldn't believe that his sidekick had just revealed the real destination of their trip to his nemesis. He had avoided giving the teen any kind of information because he had wanted him to think that he was working on yet another amazing plan of his and now the stupid robot had ruined everything.

"Amusement park?" Dib repeated, turning his squinting eye on the alien. That was unexpected. He had made a lot of hypotheses on where his rival could have spent the last two days. He had pictured him retrieving some super powerful weapon or meeting with his leaders, even, but the idea that he and GIR could have gone _on holiday_ hadn't entered his list of guesses at all.

"Training camp!" The Irken yelled, trying to cover up for the huge slip. "He meant _training camp_. His language circuits are messed up, I need to repair them. That's, uh…" He turned to look at the plush once again as his mind worked frenetically to find a proper, plausible explanation for its presence. Cursed human. He hadn't expected to have company so soon after his return. "That's the…prize they gave to whoever completed the training successfully, yes!"

"Oh no, I meant amusement park, master!" The robot chirped without stopping his happy circles around his toy. "Perhaps you're the one who has problems with the language! Because that was a big, big, big planet with lots of rides and games!"

"Shut up, you broken mass of rusty metal!" Zim hissed in the direction of his sidekick, the aghast expression on his face growing more pronounced. He was so going to beat the robot up once they would have been alone. The other had been a good companion for the last two days, but now he had ruined everything because of his inability to catch up with the situation.

"Zim, if you really were at a training camp, why are you wearing a visor saying "Craic Spor: have the best time of your life"? And I saw your ship. It was filled with…useless gadgets," Dib pointed out, stepping back in the discussion. "I'm wearing my glasses, in the case you haven't noticed. And I'm not as stupid as you think."

The Irken quickly removed the peak from his head, but he realised that he couldn't deny the truth anymore, so he stalked to the gate, going to stand just a step away from his nemesis. "Yes, I went to the best amusement park of the galaxy," he growled, pushing himself up on his tiptoes and leaning forward threateningly. " _So_? Do you have a problem with that, Dib-worm?!"

"Woah, calm down, space boy," the teen exclaimed and took a step back, fearing that the other would bang his head against his own, just to underline his point. "I was making an observation. Even if, well, _you_ at an amusement park. That's the last thing I was expecting. You've been acting weird lately, but this is another kind of weird."

The Invader's antennae shot up as he clenched his fists by his sides. "There's nothing weird in Zim's behaviour," he snarled, instantly getting defensive. He was aware that he was denying the obvious, but, until he did, the human wouldn't have been able to ask the right questions to gain more details. "Go home, worm child. Stop bothering the Mighty Zim before I decide to fit that plush in your big head instead of inside my base!"

"My head is not big!" Dib protested, but the threat still scared him a little and so he took a few more steps away from the fence. The alien seemed to have a thing for replacing organs with random objects and he didn't want that huge thing anywhere near his body, especially not _inside_ his head. "I'm leaving, I'm leaving. But this doesn't mean that it's over, Zim!"

Zim offered him a creepy smile, looking satisfied with himself for the reaction he had obtained. "Of course, it's not over, Dib-thing. It will be only when I destroy this filthy ball of dirt!" He claimed loudly, letting his head fall back as he launched himself into one of his maniac fits of laughter. "I'll rain _doom_ all over you and your planet, just as I showed you!"

The teen stared at his nemesis for a few moments, waiting for him to stop cackling, but since the other showed no intention to end it any time soon, he rolled his eyes and turned on his heels, trying to hide the fact that the alien's words had sent a few shivers down his spine. He refused to show how affected he still was by the nightmarish simulation. It was a victory he had no intentions to concede to his rival.

"Whatever, alien scum. See you at Skool," he muttered, trying to sound annoyed and unimpressed. He wasn't sure he had managed, but, since the Invader was still busy with his show of evil, he decided that it didn't matter. Most likely the other hadn't even heard him. He had better go home and get some rest or he would end up sleeping past his alarm again. He was sure that Gaz would have torn his head off if he had repeated the accident of the previous week.

The sound coming from the Irken's lips stopped abruptly once the human was out of sight and Zim's demeanour lost almost all the confidence he had been showing till a moment before. The time at the amusement park had given him a burst of energy, which had made it almost easy to act more or less like his normal self, well enough to trick Dib, but now he was already starting to feel drained once again. After all, no amount of distraction could have ever made him forget that he was _nothing_ now, that all his life had been just time borrowed by chance or mistake.

"Let's go unpack, GIR," he stated in a duller tone, walking around the plush to be able to reach the front door. "Zim has work to do."

"What about huge plushie?" The robot asked, hurrying after him. "If we leave him out in the cold, he'll feel alone!"

"I couldn't leave it there even if I wanted. It would attract the attention of every stinky human who passes by and I don't want to deal with having TV cameras around my base again," he grumbled, shooting a glare at the oversized toy. He still remembered with horror the time when the girl with the cookies had remained stuck in his garden almost all day. "I should still have that shrinking beam, somewhere in the lab…"

 **╔ IZ ╗**

"So, you and GIR really had fun this weekend," Ms Xander commented once Zim had finished to sum up his time with the robot for her.

Deep down, under her friendly smile, she was wondering what kind of amusement park allowed dogs on high speed rides, but she preferred not to ask. The teen in front of her seemed very satisfied with the experience, judging by the greedy way in which he had been munching his waffles as he described the various activities he had shared with his pet, and she didn't want to spoil his improved mood. She also wondered if she should be worried about the fact that Zim's favourite parts had been the videogame involving the destruction of a whole galaxy and the one in which he had sectioned what she thought was a virtual alien, since the Invader had thought that telling her that the creature had been real and alive was a bad idea, but she had concluded that his enjoyment was due to his need to unload his repressed anger.

"Yes. It has been surprisingly…refreshing for Zim," the Irken admitted, with just a hint of reluctance. He narrowed an eye, looking at her almost suspiciously. "You're more competent than most of the humans I've met."

She chuckled. "I'll take that as a compliment," she claimed with a hint of amusement. Then her expression turned more serious. "Do you want to tell me what's bothering you? The big thing that happened and changed your attitude?" She asked after a moment. She was aware that it was too soon to get a positive answer, but the teen was in an almost compliant mood, so she had decided to give it a try and see if she could get even just the slightest detail out of him.

Zim's expression instantly closed off at the question, his eyes turning duller. He knew that she would have tried to investigate, but he had come to hope that she would have waited some time before addressing the issue once again. "No," he answered drily and turned his head away, looking at the wall of the small office. If she had insisted, he would have invoked his right to terminate their association and would have left right away.

The counsellor sighed. That was exactly the reaction she thought she would have got. So much for trying to be optimistic. It was fine, though. She was sure that, in time, he would start to willingly volunteer pieces of information. She just needed to be patient.

"Alright, forget I asked. If you don't feel like talking about it, we won't," she reassured him, trying to catch his eyes without much success. "But we still have fifteen minutes. Why don't you tell me about Dib instead?"

The request succeeded in bringing both the alien's gaze and his attention back on her. "Why do you want me to talk about the Dib?" He asked, the suspiciousness colouring his voice once again. On one hand, he was glad that she had let the previous subject go so easily, a fact that had been a reminder for them both that _he_ was in control there, but on the other he didn't feel really comfortable with talking about his rival. It would be hard to explain why the two of them had the kind of relationship they had without telling her that he wasn't human.

"Because he's the other friend you mentioned to me," Ms Xander explained, patiently. "And we agreed that you'd have tried to talk to him, before the weekend. Did you?"

The Invader made a face at the word "friend", but then nodded. "I told him that I would be gone for the weekend. And then the worm child… _accidentally_ found out where I went, even if I didn't want him to know." He bit back a growl, remembering how GIR had spilled the truth in front of his nemesis. "So, Zim talked to him twice. Before and after the trip."

"That's very good, Zim," she nodded, looking absolutely sincere in her praise, a fact that sent a small, warm shiver up the Irken's hidden antennae. He already liked it when she told him that he had done a good job. His Tallest had never really complimented him, even when he actually did something worth of appreciation. "Now, I remember that you said that you and Dib fight most of the time. That's all there is to your relationship?"

Zim nodded without hesitation. "Yes. He is always in Zim's way and ruins my plans. I wish I could kill him. I deeply hate him," he declared solemnly and harshly, but then his half disgusted expression fell a bit, replaced by a reluctant one. "But I must say that the Dib is the…less despicable filthy human on this planet. He's the only one who really takes Zim seriously and who pays attention to me. There has been a time, a few years ago, when he stopped chasing me to go working for "real science" with his father unit." He spat the last few words out as if they were insults. "I felt… _demotivated_ to pursue my…uh, interests after he gave up on me." He poked the few waffles that were left on the plate. "But he came back in the end, because he couldn't stay away from me. I knew that he would have come back of course. Just…" He poked the food again. "He took too long for Zim's liking."

Ms Xander listened carefully to the description she was being given, frowning slightly. That sounded like a very complicated relationship and perhaps not a completely healthy one. There would be work to do on that too. "So, Dib is some sort of…arch rival for you? A nemesis, you said?" She questioned, more to clarify than because she had many doubts about it. She received a nod as an answer. "And you said that you want to…kill him."

The Irken nodded again. "Yes. In a very painful, horrible way. So he'll stop bothering me and ruining my amazing schemes," he stated, as if it was the most obvious and normal thing in the world. "I find immense pleasure in defeating and besting him with my superior skills and mind."

"Yet, the one time he left you alone and stopped bothering you, you missed him so much that you gave up on these schemes that are so precious to you," she pointed out, deciding to skip over the comments the teen had made. It was incredible how arrogant and insecure he could be at the same time. "Don't you think that, if you really…get rid of him, you'll miss him again and go back feeling demotivated? You know what I think, Zim? While I don't doubt that you like winning over Dib, and even…hurting him, I think that you don't really want him to leave you alone. He might annoy you, but he's the only one that makes things interesting enough for you. And that's why you like him better than the rest of the world."

"Zim doesn't like the Dib! I loathe him!" The Invader instantly shot back, sounding almost scandalised. However, he had to admit that she was right, at least in part. Without his rival, trying to take over Earth wouldn't have been as satisfying as he was finding the mission and, now that he was so used to have the other antagonising him, he doubted that he would ever find the task appealing if the teen had suddenly lost interest again or if he had managed to kill him. He had had plenty of occasions to permanently get rid of him during the years of their war, since the very first day, but he had never exploited them. He had inflicted the human pain and humiliation and had enjoyed it each time, he was Irken after all, but he had never tried to kill Dib for real. Perhaps it was true that he didn't want to.

"You hate him, but you like him too," the woman corrected patiently. "Emotions are a complex thing, Zim, especially when you have a complicate relationship with someone. It happens to feel two opposite sentiments for the same person. And I think it's yours and Dib's case." She bit back a sigh at the unconvinced expression that her words met. "Tell me, have you two ever done anything else, aside from fighting?"

The alien crossed his arms on his chest, looking slightly unhappy. "We have teamed up a few times," he admitted, reluctantly. "And it has worked out fine. And we've watched two movies. And shared waffles once." He decided not to mention their "date" in space and what had happened during that. He had acted under the influence of the radiations, so it didn't count. "That's all."

The counsellor nodded. "And did you enjoy your interactions with him in those occasions?"

"It's not how we're supposed to interact," Zim claimed, trying to avoid the question, but Ms Xander gave him _that_ look, the one that reminded him of his instructor, and he felt forced to answer even if he was unwilling to. "But Zim didn't mind it too much. Even if I still prefer the fighting."

"I see," she said, almost thoughtfully, and he couldn't help wondering what exactly she was seeing. "One last question. When Dib ditched you in favour of his father and "real science", were you jealous, by chance? About the fact that he was spending time with others and not with you and being content without you?"

The Irken's expression turned outraged. "Zim doesn't get jelly," was the first thing that left his mouth, but then he looked away. "But I was disappointed and angry. The Dib is _my_ nemesis and _I_ am the one who has to hold his full attention. As I'm the only one allowed to harm and break him. Well, me and his scary sister. But she doesn't count. No one and nothing can matter as much as me in his pathetic life! He belongs to _Zim_!"

He had stood up without realising it, transported by the growing heat of his words. His arms were bent in the air, gloved hands fisted tightly at the level of his face. He blinked, caught off guard by his own fit of sentiment. He had thought that, after the burst that had driven him to destroy his lab, he wouldn't have been capable anymore of a similar, intense, _sincere_ emotional energy. He fixed his uniform, lowering himself back on the chair, feeling slightly embarrassed and wishing that he could bang his head against the wall for having lost control over the subject of his stupid human nemesis. Slowly, he moved his eyes back on the woman, who however didn't seem scared or amused as he had expected her to be. She just looked thoughtful, as if she was pondering something intensely.

The silence stretched for some, uncomfortable seconds, then Ms Xander finally broke it. "Are you in love with Dib, Zim?" She asked, in a completely serious tone, her eyes watching him intently.

"Zim is… _what_?!" The Invader choked on his own breath at the question and ended up having a loud fit of coughing that went on for several moments. How had the woman reached such a _foolish_ conclusion? After he had told her straight out that he _hated_ the worm child with all his guts, among the other things! He was so shocked that he didn't even know how to react. He should drag her to his lab and perform some tests on her brain, because either she was mentally ill or she possessed a unique kind of stupidity he had yet to encounter. In both cases, it would have been worth having a closer look. Also as a payback for having implied something so outrageous about him. Him, _Zim_ , an Irken, _in love_. With a pathetic, inferior _human_. With his annoying, disgusting _rival_. No way. Defective or not, not even he would have reached such shameful, nonsensical depths.

"What's wrong in your head, human?" He managed to say, when he finally caught his breath again. "No one is worthy enough to be Zim's love-pig. Let alone the worm child!" That situation was his fault. He had tried to explain, very poorly, to a human something that was purely Irken. A notion that was ancient and almost completely discarded by his race too by now. That considered, he shouldn't be so surprised to see that she had misunderstood it. He himself had a hard time wrapping his mind around it, since the concept was more instinctual than logical. And since he shouldn't have been aware of it in the first place. "He's my _nemesis_. His goal in life is to fight me till the day one of us is permanently defeated. And that's also my only plan involving him." He stood up again. "The time is up."

The counsellor had moved backwards a bit, caught off guard by his violent reaction to her question. It was hardly the first time that one of her patients yelled at her, but there had been a strength in Zim's refusal of her words that could mean only two things. Either he was so deeply in denial that the mere thought of having feelings for Dib horrified him more than his worst nightmares or she had completely misunderstood the sense of what he had told her about the other boy. Or both. She was almost tempted to make him stay, so they could discuss the subject a bit more, but his hostility told her that she would have wasted her time.

"Alright. I will see you…Let's say Friday?" She offered, her voice sounding slightly shaky. "I can't during lunch break, so you'll have to come during your second hour of lesson. I'll talk to your teachers, so you won't have problems with them."

The alien nodded. "I will come," he agreed as he stood by the door, sounding like he was making a concession. "Do you have a task for me?"

"Nothing specific. Just…Try to build and consolidate a routine, one that allows you to focus on the important things you must do, but that leaves space for fun activities too, like your weekend with GIR. Your life has changed all of a sudden, for reasons you won't tell me yet. Rebuilding a stability will help you process the events."

Zim offered another gesture of assent and left without saying goodbye, still annoyed by the final turn that the conversation had taken. However, since he didn't want to dwell on the subject, wishing instead to just forget about the absurd insinuation he had been offered, he focused his thoughts on the new assignment he had been give. _Routine._ That was easy. His training had been made of a very tight schedule, which he had to respect if he didn't wish to suffer through horribly painful consequences. His job at Sizz-Lorr's restaurant had been made of shifts and timetables just as strict. So, he had spent most of his life more or less following a sequence of predetermined actions. He could do it again.

* * *

Hey there guys!

So, here goes chapter 13. I'm a little late with the update and I apologise, but I had an awful weekend. I'll try to make it up to you with the next one! I should be able to have it ready for Sunday, if nothing happens!

So, as I promised to some of you, I actually wrote down a bit of the whole amusement park experience. GIR and Zim didn't blow up the place, which is quite a miracle, don't you agree? xD Still, I hope you guys enjoyed it, because I had a lot of fun picturing the scene!  
Also, I tried another attempt to humour with the whole plushie thing but I'm not really sure I achieved it ^^" Humour is definitely not my forte xD But I just wanted a pretext to have GIR ruining Zim's (bad) attempt at lying! And to have GIR in general I guess.  
As for the session, well, I had fun dissecting Zim's and Dib's relationship, also because I think both Zim and I needed to asses that particular situation a bit xD It worked for me (also because the more I write Ms Xander, the more I realise how well she can voice some of *my* thoughts and opinion, which is kinda neat), but not so much for him I think! It was supposed to be an echo of Zim's thoughts after the simulation, in a way, when he has admitted to himself that, aside from GIR and his Computer, Dib is pretty much the only connection he has left, even if he refuses to fully acknowledge how important that is for him. Speaking of their relationship, you guys might have noticed that I put a lot of emphasis on the "nemesis" thing. That's because it's a concept that has a peculiar significance (in my head) in the ancient Irken culture and it will be explained later on!  
Also, I have a thing for Mopiness of Doom. I don't care if it wasn't aired, for me everything that happens there is fully canon. Just saying!

Enough of my rambling, though. As per usual I wanna thank all my readers. I can't tell you how glad I am that you guys are enjoying my writing! I hope that I'll manage to keep you happy with it ^^ If you have any observation, they are welcome!  
And of course, I thank in particular all my reviewers! Your comments are golden inspiration for me!

 **Virasol** : Hey there! Glad to see you here ^^ I hope that you'll like how I'll deal with the whole therapy part. I'm trying to make it not too predictable and, at the same time, without going too out of character...which I admit isn't easy. I guess I'll let you judge! As for Dib, he'll have his moments...But he current has more urgent issue, so it might take a while! Thanks a lot for the review!

 **guestrev:** I'm more wondering what Zim will make of Ms Xander, to be honest xD But I guess we'll both wait and see! Thanks a lot for being always present. I truly appreciate it!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encourage. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

I hope you have enjoyed the chapter!


	14. Chapter 14

It took Dib a couple of weeks to figure it out, but in the end he managed to see the bigger picture. Apparently, he and Zim had built a new kind of _routine_ , which was very similar to their previous one, but which also had two _vital_ differences.

The first change in their reality was that now there were two kinds of days around the Invader. They saw each other in class and, depending on the type of day, either they exchanged their usual verbal battles or the Irken ignored him completely.

The former was the kind of attitude that had always characterised their interactions and it happened during what the teen had come to label as Zim's "good days". The "good days" were also the days in which his nemesis plotted to destroy the planet, in which they fought and clashed, the ones filled with weird alien devices, bruises, maniac laughs and inner fire.

The second thing, instead, happened when the alien's apathy was more pronounced and, in that case, Zim spent most of the time simply staring into space, his thoughts clearly far, far away from where his body was. During these days, the "bad" ones, the Invader had only cold, cruel words for Dib and, after school was over, the alien simply walked back to his base, locked himself inside the building and didn't come out, not even if the human tried to infiltrate it. He let the Computer or GIR kick him out, not moving a finger aside from giving the order.

The second difference was even more shocking. Zim's plans had become more cunning and much more effective than they had ever been and Dib found himself being on the losing side more often than not, no matter how hard he tried to stop his rival. It was as if the Irken had suddenly decided to show that his training was worth something and he definitely did a _good_ job at it. The Invader was less careless and more focused, wasted less time in stupid things, kept GIR at distance when he was approaching the most delicate parts of his plans. He listened to his Computer's good suggestions and, in general, he and his two artificial sidekicks seemed to have found a better balance. Zim was also much more ruthless in combat. It was almost as if every scheme, every attack was a test he _had_ to pass, at any cost, as if his life depended on his success. The times when he lost, his whole façade crumbled and his eyes emptied, leaving behind nothing but a blank image of what he was. It creeped the hell out of Dib every time, to the point that he couldn't fully enjoy his victories.

However, that was only a small part of the second change. The main fact was that, even if Zim had succeeded in winning over and over, the planet was still intact, his inhabitants still free and oblivious of the alien menace that threatened their lives and no Armada had come to annihilate the human race. That was because, every single time, either it turned out to be all a simulation or the Invader, after having made his speech about Irken superiority, about his amazingness and about how incredible he had been in humiliating his nemesis, stopped right before he could hit the last button, choosing instead to blow up his machines or give up on what he had conquered willingly. He always said: "Game over, Dib", as if it was all some sort of twisted videogame, and then dropped everything, his proud and confident demeanour included, leaving the human dumbfounded and disoriented each time.

Dib couldn't really understand what the alien was trying to do. He showed him more or less once a week that he could have destroyed the Earth, quite _brilliantly_ in some cases, and yet he never did. It made no sense to him, just as most of Zim's moods didn't. He was confused by it all and _hated_ his inability to catch up on the greater scheme, assuming that there was one, just as he loathed the Irken who refused to offer explanations.

At first, when that mess has started, he had told himself that, with time, he would eventually find out what was going on, just as he had figured out his rival's new behaviour patterns. However, as the days slowly turned into weeks, he began to realise that he wasn't closer to an understanding of the situation than he had been at the very start of it. Just as he couldn't grasp why Zim's grades had suddenly gone from barely passable to almost _stellar_ and where the Invader disappeared twice a week, either during one of the lessons or during lunch break. The only thing that had grown stronger and clearer was his own frustration.

 **IZ ╗**

"Well, there were Skoodge and Tenn," Zim answered after a moment, looking pensive, a clawed finger tapping against his chin. "They weren't exactly "friends" of Zim, but they are the only ones who never hated me, I guess."

Ms Xander nodded, scribbling down a couple of notes. The first time she had picked up her notebook to write a few words down, the Invader had shot out of his chair, yelling something about him not having given her the permission to have written evidence of what he said during their conversations. He had calmed down a bit after she had thoroughly explained that she would be the only one to see the notes and that she used them to have a clearer, better picture of his situation. However, she had still been forced to swear on her honour that she wouldn't use any of it against him and that she would have _burnt_ them once their association would be over. Only at that point she had been allowed to write down her impressions of their sessions.

"Were they kids you knew in your childhood?" She asked, looking up at the alien.

"Skoodge, yeah, we were assigned together since we were smee…children," the Irken nodded, his mind flying briefly to his and the other Invader's misadventures at the underground training area. "He's an idiot. He believed everything I told him, or almost, and did everything I asked. We almost got expelled from…the local learning facility, once. It was his fault, of course." He scoffed, averting his eyes. In truth the idea of going to the surface, even if it was forbidden, had been his. Skoodge had simply followed, after having tried, and failed, to protest. "But he is a good soldier. He's useful. And loyal."

"Like GIR?" The counsellor asked, with a small, amused smile.

"Yes, a bit like GIR. But Skoodge was much, much less noisy. And…smarter."

"What about Tenn?"

"I met her when I was…older. She is…alright. A very capable Inv…person. We never really spoke much anyway. But, as I said, she didn't mind me as most of the others did. Smart one."

The woman let out a hum. "Where are they now? Have you kept in touch?"

Zim dropped his gaze. For all he knew, both Tenn and Skoodge were still part of the Empire and respected Invaders, even if they weren't very tall. He couldn't help feeling envious, even of Skoodge, which was a sentiment he would have never imagined of experiencing.

"They are on other pl…in other countries. Far, far away from here," he answered quietly, a hint of bitterness in his voice. The female human would have surely interpreted it as if he missed them, while the truth was a completely different one. "I haven't heard from them in years."

"Why don't you try to contact them, sometimes? Going back to one's roots can help, when you're trying to face a life-changing situation."

The Irken almost scoffed again. He didn't have roots, not anymore. Him being banished was the core of the problem. However, she didn't know that because he hadn't told her anything. _Yet_.

"I'll think about it," he answered vaguely. Why not taking her suggestion, though? Her advice had always been good for him up till that point. He could try and send Skoodge a transmission, if he managed to find out where the other was.

 **IZ ╗**

"Do you want to try?"

The sudden question broke the silence, without notice, and it was the last thing that Zim would have expected to hear. He had taken up the habit to spend most of his lunch breaks, when he didn't have a session, in Gaz's spot in the back yard. The girl usually arrived half way through the break, shoved him aside to make space for herself and sat down to play her games.

At first, she had shown annoyance every time she had found him there and, a couple of times, she had even sent him away, because she wasn't in the mood for company. However, as the days turned into weeks, she had seemed to get used to him, especially considering that he was careful to be quiet as she gamed, and just kept glaring because it was what she constantly did, with almost everyone. It could be said that they had formed some sort of silent companionship, which meant that the girl put up with his presence and he recognised that she was better than most of her race.

"What?" He asked, blinking slowly. He had understood the question, but he wasn't sure if he had grasped the right meaning of it. The console that was being offered to him left little space for doubts, but he wanted to be sure. After all, Gaz could have easily beaten him up. That female worm child was a real menace, much more than her brother.

"The _game_ , moron. Do you want to try it?" She repeated, rolling her eyes and elbowing him hard, making sure to hurt enough to make him wince. "You've spent literal weeks just staring at me as I play. You must be wanting to try it."

The Invader slowly took the console, looking at her suspiciously as if he was waiting for her to stab him in the back as soon as he would have looked away. "What's the catch? You're never nice, Gaz-sister. Let alone with Zim."

"Just shut up and start playing, before I change my mind," she commanded curtly, her frown beginning to look threatening. "And be careful not to save the shitty score you'll make over my own. I'll make you suffer till the end of eternity if you do."

"Whatever, human," he grumbled under his breath, trying to hide the fact that her growling had scared him a bit. Even if he was a Defective, he still had some pride left. Besides, officially, he was still an Invader and he needed to behave as one. "Let's try this game of yours. It can't be _that_ hard for some who is used to piloting spaceships."

It turned out that the game wasn't easy at all. In the first match, he died after only three minutes, without even having completed the first level and got lectured on the fact that he wouldn't go anywhere by pressing the buttons randomly. He didn't listen to her and got his ass kicked by the game a second time. At this point, he swallowed his pride and asked the girl to explained him the combos once again. She did and the next attempts went much better. By the end of the break, he had achieved a decent score, even if it was nowhere close to the human's usual ones.

"Not bad for a dumb, incompetent greenhorn," Gaz commented as she got up to leave. She was sounding almost satisfied. "But don't get used to it. And, especially, don't tell Dib or anyone else I let you play. Unless you have a wish for a horrible death." And with that she was gone, not bothering to wave goodbye. She never did.

That first sentence she had spoken, however, was one of the very few, closest things to a compliment she had ever offered in her life. Zim decided that he could feel proud to have been addressed such an honour.

 **IZ ╗**

The sturdy Irken on the screen blinked a few times, mouth shaping a surprised "o". He clearly hadn't been expecting the call, but, as soon as he recovered from the shock, his eyes brightened and his antennae perked up in what could have easily been read as delight.

" _Zim_! It's been such a long time! You're alive. And so I am, did you see? I survived that bad mess on Hobo 13!" He exclaimed, looking incredibly proud of himself. He then tilted his head. "But, hey, Zim…Have you got _taller_?"

"Taller? Nah, it must be an optical effect. GIR has been messing with my equipment lately," Zim answered with a shrug, kicking his legs on the top of the console in front of him. It was nice, being able to speak his mother language. Usually he only did when he called the Tallest, but he had been avoiding contacting them as much as possible since the eavesdropped conversation. "And I can see you're alive, Skoodge. Yeah, I'm alive too." Another shrug. "What are you up to?"

"Oh, okay. You've better get your communication system fixed. People might get nervous if they think you've grown." Skoodge grinned slightly. "I'm back on Irk right now. The Tallest decided that I need a holiday…or something. I'm working at the local snack facility. Do you remember it?"

The thin Irken lifted a brow and an antenna. "The Tallest demoted you?"

The other Invader looked lost for a moment at his question. "Uh, no. I mean, it's a holiday. Does being on license corresponds to being demoted? I didn't do anything to deserve it."

Zim was tempted to point out that Red and Purple could have easily done it out of spite, but he stopped himself. Officially, he was still unaware of what his leaders and most of his race thought of him, so such a show of disrespect would have surely alarmed his former fellow soldier. "Never mind. Have you heard anything from Tenn?"

Skoodge blinked again at his dismissal of the subject, but then shrugged. "Yeah. She had to leave Meekrob to avoid capture, after that ugly incident with the faulty SIR units," he answered, frowning slightly. "The Tallest weren't very happy with her. I don't think she's ranked as an Invader anymore. But for the rest she's fine. I'm sure that she'll be reinstated, sooner or later." He glanced at something outside the screen view. "My shift is about to start, I have to go. Hey, let's talk again, sometimes, if you aren't too busy with your planet. It was nice to hear from you, Zim."

"Yeah, let's," the thin Invader nodded, even if he didn't look too convinced. "Stop by Earth, if you'll ever be in the area."

He knew that it would never happen, especially now that the other was confined on Irk, but the invitation made Skoodge beam, so he decided, as the other waved him goodbye, that it had been the right thing to say.

 **IZ ╗**

"The Dib-sister is a scary creature. Everyone knows not to mess with her. I learnt it the hard way," Zim explained, making a face. "I think that she hates the inhabitants of this planet more than I do. And she hates the Dib too. However, at times, she's not that bad. The other day, she let me play with her videogames. I've never seen her sharing."

"Well, you and Gaz have been spending quite some time together, recently, haven't you?" Ms Xander pointed out, as to encourage him to elaborate. "Would you consider her a friend, even if she isn't nice to you? You said she's…rude to everyone, but she made an exception for you. It must mean something, don't you agree?"

The Irken shook his head and raised his hands, looking horrified. "She's _not_ a friend. Don't let her hear you. She will murder me, if she hears that someone thinks that she likes Zim. Or anyone else," he quickly stated, looking around as if he had been expecting Gaz to show up with her bat, ready to beat him to death. Then he became pensive. "I could say that we've bonded over disliking the Dib, though. Even if I believe that she hates him less than she used to. She stands up for him at times now. A few years ago, she didn't care if he was in troubles."

"You have all grown up, you aren't kids anymore," the counsellor pointed out, with a warm smile. "People change and so do relationships. Gaz is probably starting to appreciate her brother more, now that they have both matured. And you hate Dib less too, don't you?"

An offended expression appeared on the Invader's face. "You're _lying_!" He screeched, shooting out of his chair. "Zim hates the Dib just as much as he used to!" He crossed his arms on his chest and turned his head away. "Just, now Zim sort of likes him too. As you said."

The woman massaged her abused ears. That kid had quite a voice when he started to yell. "Sorry, sorry. You're right. My mistake," she conceded, trying to pacify him. She had to be more careful when she addressed the weird bond between her patient and his nemesis. It was clearly one of the _many_ sensitive subjects that set the teen off. "But I'm glad you've finally admitted that there's more than mortal hate between you and Dib. Now you should really start doing something about it."

Zim eyed her suspiciously for a moment, then shrugged. "Whatever you say, Acelynn-doc," he grumbled, heading for the door.

He had no idea of what she meant with "doing something about it", but he didn't care to ask. His relationship with Dib was just as it was supposed to be. However, he would give her advice some thought. It could turn out that she had, once again, a point. A part of him was starting to think that he should be upset about the fact that the woman was right so often, but since her suggestions did nothing but benefiting him, he had decided that he would tolerate the fact. For now.

He stopped on the threshold. "You should have your guest chair checked. Someone has been shortening its legs," he added, before walking out of the office.

 **IZ ╗**

Dib was on his knees, on the floor of a warehouse, panting. There was a small rivulet of blood that slowly ran down his cheek, starting from his hairline, and his head hurt in that spot from the direct hit he had received. His coat was torn in several places and his jeans had a few holes in them too. The ground all around him was in even worse conditions, burnt and covered with the ruins of the building.

That time Zim had tried to blow up the whole City. He had planted a huge, alien bomb in the middle of that particular construction and the device had sprouted green, fluorescent roots that had extended under the whole inhabited area. Once the main core of the bomb would have been activated, it would have set on fire the powerful, explosive substance contained in the protrusions, efficiently blowing up everything around and, especially, _above_ them. The plan wouldn't have exactly meant the end of the world, since it had sounded more like a massive terroristic attack than a scheme for Earth domination, but the number of the victims would have still been far too high.

Dib had rushed around the whole City for half of the day, trying to retrieve the device that controlled the bomb, and he and Zim had ended up fighting in that warehouse. The Irken had been a fury, not hesitating to use every advantage that his PAK offered him to incapacitate him, not caring about the amount of damage he might end up causing. The teen had really been afraid that the other could, if not kill him, at least leave him with some permanent consequence. At times the Invader seemed to forget that humans couldn't heal as fast and as effectively as his people did thanks to their PAKs, that if he crushed his spine he would be paralysed for the rest of his life or that if he hit his head too hard he might be reduced to a vegetable for the rest of his existence.

After a heated battle, the Irken had managed to pin him against the wall with two of his spider legs, trapping him there and threatening to slit his throat with a third one. All Dib had been left to do had been watching his nemesis as he made his usual victory speech and then cut off the roots of the device he had designed. The green tentacles had contorted and then had turned dark brown, clearly dead. That combat was over and he had been left on the ground, once again in the role of the defeated. What he hadn't expected had been Zim blowing up the building, especially considering that they were both still in there. He didn't know if it was part of the alien's crazy plan or if he had just been lucky, but no piece of cement had hit him. All the explosion had done to him had been covering him in dust.

The soft sounds of booted steps distracted him from his thoughts, making him lift his eyes. He had thought that the Irken had already left, as he usually did, but instead he was standing in front of him. His uniform was torn too and there was a hint of pinkish blood coming out from a scratch on his chest and from his mouth. His eyes, however, were just as expressionless as they usually were after every battle.

"Why are you still here?" The teen questioned, tiredly. He didn't have any energy left to deal with whatever his nemesis had still in store for him. He just wanted to go home and take a shower. That apparently senseless game was starting to tire him, but he knew that he couldn't stop chasing after the other. The alien might have decided to carry out for real one of those plans in any moment, so every time a fight started he never knew if it would be the umpteenth trick or if that time he would be facing an actual threat.

"I rented another of your stupid alien movies," the quiet answer was. Then the Invader's voice seemed to gain a little more strength. "The Dib must come and watch it with Zim."

The human blinked, caught off guard, and for a moment he thought that he had heard it wrong. Or that his rival was mocking him. However, the expression on the other's face was deadly serious and his brain confirmed that he had heard the words right.

"A movie?" He repeated, incredulous. And suddenly all the stress in his body melted away and he found himself laughing breathlessly and a bit hysterically at the absurdity of the situation. "A fucking _movie_!"

Zim's antennae pressed against his skull and his magenta eyes lit up with a hint of anger. "Are you making fun of me, you filthy pig?" He hissed, grabbing the front of his kneeling opponent's T-shirt. "Have you already forgotten that you just lost to me yet again, you pathetic, unworthy creature?"

"No, no, I'm not laughing at you," Dib hurried to explain, rubbing the few tears that had slipped down his cheeks because of how hard he had been laughing. He removed the Irken's claws from his already torn T-shirt and held them. "Come on, help me on my feet, alien scum. I'm not sure I can stand up on my own." He chuckled slightly. "I…I'm stopping. It's just…You've almost blown me up and now you're inviting me over for a movie. It's a bit…surreal. I guess I'm just tired and trying not to go completely hysteric. You've been acting so _weird_ in the last weeks, Zim. You're really driving me crazy. I don't know what to think anymore."

The Irken scoffed, but still pulled the hand that was holding his, helping his rival up. He then bent down to retrieve his wig from where it had fell during the fight and pulled out his contact lenses from his PAK.

"You humans are so fragile," he commented, looking disgusted. Then, though, a small smirk opened on his face. "And who tells you that Zim's amazing masterplan isn't exactly to drive you insane so that you won't be able to stop me anymore?"

The human shook his head. "I don't think so. You could have conquered the planet a hundred time, by now, and yet you didn't," he pointed out, pushing his glasses up and leaning heavily into the Invader when the latter approached him again. He had a sprained ankle he hadn't noticed till now. "I'm starting to think that you don't want to destroy the Earth anymore. You just love kicking my ass and bragging about how powerful you are." He was joking, but only in part. The idea had crossed his mind, even if he wouldn't believe it until he found out what had caused the change in his nemesis's behaviour. "Will you ever tell me what happened to you?"

Zim allowed the teen's arm to fall around his shoulders for support and he wrapped on of his PAK legs around his rival's waist, half-holding him up. "You're even more foolish than I thought, if you believe that I will ever tell you," he stated matter-of-factly, avoiding the question and discarding the half-joke he had been addressed. "Now, stop talking and focus on moving, worm child. I left GIR making sammiches. I'm worried about the state of my base. And I have to return the movie tomorrow morning, so we need to watch it tonight."

Dib shook his head in defeat, but he didn't press on the issue. He was too tired and, for once, the alien seemed to be in a decent mood. He didn't wish to ruin it. A quiet sigh escaped his lips, as he let his weight fall a bit more on the metal limb wrapped around him. How ironic. It was the same that had threatened to tear him apart not too much time before. It gave him a mix of contradictory feelings, just as his relationship with the Invader.

As they made their way back to Zim's base, he distractedly noticed that he could comfortably rest his arm around the alien's shoulders and actually lean on him without having to bend over. Weird. He had been ready to swear that their height difference was more pronounced.

 **IZ ╗**

"Yes, Zim?" The teacher sighed exasperated as she noticed the gloved hand raised and waving from the back of the class. She had already explained the same concept three times since the students seemed unable to get it and she had no intention of starting over again, also because she didn't know how else to go around it.

"Teacher drone, it's eleven thirty. Zim has to go," the Irken stated, pushing himself up without waiting for an answer and picking up his already packed bag. "I have the permission pass."

The woman was relieved to hear that it wasn't another question and shrugged. That was hardly the first time that he left in the middle of her class. She didn't care. It was much better than having him and the Membrane kid shouting at each other and throwing things across the room. Besides, Zim's grades had improved since when he had started to see his counsellor, so she couldn't complain.

"Yes, of course," she waved, before turning back towards the blackboard, intentioned to go on with her explanation before someone else asked her to repeat the previous part for the umpteenth time.

The Invader made his way to the door and stopped in the threshold, addressing a smirk to Dib, who was warily squinting at him. The human still had no idea of where he disappeared when he went to his sessions and the fact amused him to no end. The confused and annoyed look on his rival's face was yet another reason to look forward to his appointments with Ms Xander. The main one was that he had come to enjoy those conversations. He always felt better, less empty and more motivated after them, even if at times the woman made him angry too. She hadn't been able to help him out with his main issue yet, most likely because he still refused to talk about it. However, on the other hand, she had indirectly assisted him with rebuilding his life, finding distractions and a pseudo-balance that helped him working around the reality of his condition, that allowed him to act and pretend. His existence had turned into a game of smoke and mirrors. It was hardly how he had always pictured it, but for the moment it worked just fine.

 **IZ ╗**

"This game is a _cheat_! Zim demands a rematch!"

"Shut up, moron. You say that only because you're such a sore _loser_. And I gave you five rematches already. But fine. I'll kick your skinny alien ass one more time."

"Masteeeeeer! Why aren't you eating my waffles?! Don't you like them? I made them for you!"

"GIR, I'm in the middle of an important battle here! I don't have time for waffles!"

"But _maaaaaaster_! I so _SAD_ now!"

"You're so dumb that the only thing you're really good at is making your even dumber robot cry."

" _LIES_! Zim is good at a lot of things. Shut up, scary pig!"

"Aw! _PIGGY_!"

"You two are such _freaks_ …"

Dib hadn't believed his eyes when he had opened the door of his own house, thinking for a moment that he had somehow ended up in another universe. He had had an extra lesson that day and, since Gaz hadn't wanted to stay around and wait for him, she had walked her way home alone. Or at least, that was what he had thought.

He blinked, to make sure that his eyes and ears weren't playing tricks on him. The sight of his sister on the couch, playing a game, wasn't abnormal at all. She usually favoured the smaller consoles, the ones that she could carry around wherever she went, but at times, when their father didn't come back for the night, she indulged in having dinner on the couch and played using the large television screen. What was definitely _off_ in the whole picture were the _undisguised_ Invader yelling insults in what he guessed being Irken, as he was on his way to lose his sixth match, or so he had deduced from the conversation he had witnessed while gaping in the doorway, and the crazy _robot_ running around and carrying a plate full of waffles.

"What the hell is going on here?!" He exclaimed, finally finding his voice. He didn't know what to feel. Perhaps he was hallucinating. Maybe it was one of the alien's crazy simulations, this time openly aimed to compromise his mental sanity. "Gaz? What is _he_ doing here?!"

That had been one of Zim's "bad days". The Irken had been quiet and unapproachable. By now the teen didn't try to interact with him anymore when his nemesis was in that kind of moods. So, he would have expected the alien to go back to his base and stay there till the next morning. Instead, the Invader had somehow ended up on _his couch_ , looking much livelier as he played _videogames_ with _his sister_. There were so many wrong things in the idea that he didn't know where to start from.

"Oh, Dib, you're back," the girl addressed him flatly, her expression not changing from the slightly annoyed one she was wearing. Her fingers kept moving fast on the buttons of the console and whatever move her character did made Zim swear in alien again. "It was about time. Now you can help me entertaining your space boy."

" _MARY_!" GIR stepped in before he could answer, rushing towards him and presenting him the plate with the pile of waffles. "You will eat them, won't you? Won't you? _Woooooon't you_?"

"Eat those cursed waffles, Dib-thing, so he'll shut up! He's ruining Zim's amazing concentration!" His nemesis barked from his spot on the couch, claws hitting the console buttons frenetically. He looked almost physically in pain from how tense his body was. Even his antennae were stretched rigidly backwards. "I need a _win_! I can't lose to a mere human! _Again!_ "

The teen picked up a waffle from the top of the small mountain, gaining a happy screech from the robot at that, and then walked over to where his sister was sitting, carelessly dumping his bag next to the couch. "How did you achieve… _this_?" He questioned, gesturing in Zim's direction, not really knowing how to define the alien's current behaviour. "And why are you allowing him to play with your videogames? I thought you didn't like him."

Gaz looked very tempted to turn around and shot him a glare, but in the end she decided that it wasn't worth risking losing to the moron who currently occupied the other end of the sofa, so she kept her eyes on the screen.

"I found him moping around on the way home and I dragged him here. I _hate_ mopey idiots. He called his stupid robot to warn him that he would get back late and, somehow, that thing showed up in our kitchen five minutes later and started making _waffles_ ," she answered, in the same monotone tone she had used to greet him. One of her hands briefly let go on the console, while she kept shooting with the other, and she snatched a sweet from a passing GIR. "They're better than the frozen ones Dad gives us for breakfast." She stuffed the whole thing in her mouth and chewed it aggressively as her fingers went back to the buttons. "Playing this kind of videogames makes him less mopey. Besides, it's hardly the first time we play together, even if you wouldn't say judging by how _bad_ he is at it." She scoffed. "I still don't like him, but…I have to admit that he _grows_ on you. Like an alien fungus."

Dib would have laughed at how accurate his sister's metaphor was to describe the way Zim had, more or less willingly, got entangled in their lives, but his mind had stopped before that statement, to when she had mentioned that it wasn't the first time she let the Invader play her games. His eyes widened a bit. When had that happened? The Irken shared most of _his_ classes and none of Gaz's and the girl spent most of her breaks with him, aside from part of the lunch one. Had they been meeting behind his back?

"What do you mean, "it's hardly the first time"?!" He exclaimed, perhaps with a little more vehemence than he had meant.

The fact that Zim and Gaz had been spending time together disturbed him, for two very different reasons. The first, and the easiest to admit, was that he was worried for his sister's safety. She might have been more than capable of taking care of herself, but lately his nemesis had become increasingly cunning and _lethal_. Not even someone as tough as Gaz could anything barehanded against Irken technology.

The second reason was a feeling he really struggled to understand, but it was there, just as strong as the first. He didn't like the fact that the girl could interact without many problems with Zim when the latter was on his "bad days" and that the alien talked and did things with her, while he avoided or ignored him. Maybe it was a stupid notion, but _he_ was supposed to be the person the Invader turned to, if he needed something, when even his sophisticated technology couldn't be of assistance. Not Gaz, not anyone else. _Him_. After all, he did go to the alien, when he needed help. The fact that his rival laughed in his face most of the times was a detail. The concept still stood.

This time Gaz glanced away from the screen to shoot a look at her brother, also because she had got so far ahead in the game that there was no way Zim could catch up with her, let alone best her, now. "Lunch breaks. A few weeks ago, after I left you in the cafeteria, I found him occupying _my_ spot," she explained with a shrug, but she narrowed her eyes, taking in her sibling's reaction one last time before she turned her attention back to the match. "He refused to leave and, since he was being quieter and less obnoxious than his usual, I let him stay. I guess it became a habit." Another shrug. "After weeks, I figured that he might want to try, instead of just sitting on his ass and watching me play. He mostly sucks at Game Slaver, but he's a decent pilot."

Dib gaped at her for a few more moments, struggling to get the words out. He wasn't even sure about what kind of objection he wanted to make. The whole situation was as out of place as Zim sitting on his couch or drinking tea with his father. "I…You never let _me_ pla! And we grew up together!" He ended up pointing out, even if that was hardly the core of the subject. "How come?"

"You never wanted to play. You are always too busy chasing Bigfoot or some other monster to bother with videogames, remember?" The girl shot back, not losing a single beat, not in the conversation, not on the screen. "Gee, what's your problem, Dib? Are you _jealous_?"

"Hey, I caught Bigfoot! On tape!…Almost," the teen protested, stumbling on his own statements, half offended and half embarrassed, but he decided that it was better not address Gaz's words directly. She was right, after all. He had always been more interested in watching Mysterious Mysteries and hunting the paranormal than in playing with her. That was one of the many reasons why they had never really bonded. He felt his face growing hot at her question, but he tried to play that off too. "Don't be ridiculous! Jealous of _what_?"

"Dib-stink, stop wasting your breath with her and come to assist Zim with this Earthen cheat game!" The Irken interjected before the girl could answer, unknowingly saving his rival from an even more embarrassing comeback. He shot the human a glance that was half way between a commanding glare and a weirdly soothing look. How he mastered both at the same time was a mystery to the teen. "And you have no reason to be jelly of my association with the Gaz-sister. _You_ are Zim's nemesis, not her. That won't change."

"I'm not…" Dib started again, but he gave up before finishing the sentence. No one would believe him, no matter how much he insisted. Even GIR had started to run around the room again, this time shouting "Mary is jelly!" at the top of his vocal capacity. So, instead, he walked around the couch and went to sit on the armrest, next to the Invader.

"Is that nemesis thing supposed to comfort me?" He questioned, before rolling his eyes. "And do you even _know_ how to play, space boy?"

"Of course I know!" The alien protested, shooting the human a full glare this time. Then he moved his eyes back on the screen, a frown knotting his brows together. "You humans really have no understanding of my superior Irken culture. Foolish, stinky creatures."

The teen bit back an exasperated groan. "How am I supposed to know about your damned alien culture if you don't tell me a thing about it?!" He protested loudly, trying to snatch the console from Zim's hands. "And give me that, alien scum. You _obviously_ have no idea of what you're doing!"

Gaz watched them fighting with each other, with the result that she won the match even faster. Not a surprise since they were more focused on shouting insults at each other than on cooperating properly. She hit the "new game" option for the seventh time. It was almost too easy. " _Morons_."

 **IZ ╗**

"Zim has come to believe that the Dib feels the same."

Ms Xander blinked at the non-sequitur, caught off guard by the sudden change of subject. Zim was always very random when he talked, especially if she allowed him free rein in conducting the conversation, but, even after so many sessions, she still had some troubles following him at times. "What do you mean?" She asked sounding confused.

"The whole nemesis thing I've been trying to explain you for ages, Acelynn-doc," the Invader answered, sounding slightly irritated by her inability to keep up with him. "I think the Dib feels the same way I feel about him. Only, he's too stupid and too _human_ to understand it."

"I…see," the woman said, unsure, since she herself still had some troubles understanding the depth of the concept. She was a psychologist, she knew a lot about many kinds of relationships. The love-hate ones weren't an exception. However, she had the feeling that there was something more to her patient's concept of the bond, something _alien_ she couldn't grasp, no matter how hard she tried. "And what are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know yet." A shrug. "GIR messed up my lab again. I'm going to tear him into _atoms_ this time."

* * *

Hi guys!

I'm once again a little later than what I had a promised, but stuff happened. Plus, my exams are approaching, so I need to start spending more time studying too. Which means that my updates will be delayed. Still, I promise to try and take at most two weeks to update! Less if I can!

This chapter is a bit all over the place I know. The various scenes I've written happen in a period of time that covers (more or less) the two months that follow chapter 13 and the main aim of this chapter is to give a general picture of Zim's new "normalcy". There are a few small changes in the relationships between the characters, and I chose to write those scenes because I thought they could underline and explain them. If you have suggestions or think that some things haven't been worked out properly, please let me know!  
During this time, Zim keeps seeing Ms Xander, keeps meeting Gaz during lunch break and he switches between days when he is closed off in himself and others in which he cooks up plans and puts the into action.  
Dib, as you might have grasped, hasn't got any closer to figure out what's up with Zim and he's extremely busy trying to make sure that he doesn't decide to wreck the planet for real. And especially he is still having a hard time figuring out where exactly the two of them stand with each other, considering Zim's unexplained change of behaviour.  
As for Gaz, she's pretty much trying not to let her brother's paranoia and Zim's issues become her problem too. As I think I've mentioned before, I have a soft spot for the idea of Zim and Gaz sharing some sort of reluctant friendship, and that's pretty much where they are heading. I'm planning to write a chapter (or at least part of it) from her point of view, to explain properly the changes in her character soon too!  
Other thing I wanna comment on, I made Skoodge have a guest appearance, finally! I wanted to make him come in sooner, but the story is turning out to be longer than I thought. He will have a much more relevant part in the second arc, but I plan to make him appear again in this one too.

Now, I think I've rambled enough! Thanks to all my readers, I'm really glad to know that people are following and enjoying my writing!  
And of course I want to thank my reviewers, because with out them I would have, most likely, stopped publishing this already ^^" Thanks, guys. Your reviews really make my day!

 **guestrev:** I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed GIR's and Zim's time at the amusement park! I kinda want to write a lil fluff (if you can call it like that xD) after all the dark themes I've dealt with. And, as I mentioned, the nemesis thing is quite complex concept and I'll explain more later on!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encourage. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

Enjoy!


	15. Chapter 15

Zim stood still in front of Ms Xander's office, hand half lifted to grab the handle. He felt stuck and couldn't bring himself to just open the door and get inside. He knew that the woman was waiting for him, that he should have joined her almost five minutes before, but instead, once he had reached his destination, he had frozen in his spot, unable to move.

It was one of the days that Dib had come to label as his "bad" ones, even if the alien refused to use the idiotic labels that his rival had created to define his moods. Or even to acknowledge said moods in the first place. The irritating human had been watching him attentively for all the time in which they had shared a class, as per usual, and he had felt his amber gaze intensifying when he had asked the permission to leave the room. The Invader, however, hadn't bothered to look back, not even once, not that time. Because, whether he chose to admit it or not, that day was really a bad one. There wasn't a specific reason, but he suspected that it was someone connected with what he had been doing during the weekend.

He felt his antennae lowering under the wig at the memory. He and GIR had gone back to Craic Spor for another small vacation, which had been as intense as the first one, but hadn't had the same positive effect on the Irken's mood. Zim had chosen to use once again the facility he had so much enjoyed during their previous visit, the game in which the players competed to conquer a galaxy. He had "won", more or less, this time too, ending up destroying pretty much everything that could be demolished, meaning planets, stars and the other players' fleets. He had even collapsed a couple of black holes, a fact that had left a few participants gaping in shock.

However, instead of feeling proud of his achievements, once out of the facility, a whole different set of feelings had overwhelmed him. The pride had been there, for the first few minutes, but then it had started to melt away as the knowledge that his conquest had been nothing but a game had settled in. It had all been an illusion, a fake reality, just as the one he had been living for most of his life. Moreover, he had been hit by the realisation that he hadn't conquered anything, not just because he didn't have an Empire to which he could offer the ashes of the galaxy, but also because all he had brought was destruction, of the type that couldn't be used in any way. His people could have done nothing with supernovas and exploded planets. They couldn't have built anything with no ground to start with in the first place. His work had been just another, undeniable proof of his status as a Defective. All he could bring was devastation, which wasn't bad in itself, but it was of the wrong kind and _there_ laid the problem. Also, the disapproving and hateful looks he had received from the other players had suddenly morphed into glaring Irken eyes, all filled with despise and judgement, Red's and Purple's scornful ones before any other.

The feeling of not belonging, of having done nothing good, nothing _worthy_ at all in his whole existence had hit him like a bomb, making him stumble and almost land on his knees in the middle of the crowded park. No matter how many distractions he had been greedily offering himself in the last weeks, no matter the routine he had established to help himself coping and, especially, not thinking. The reality of his condition was there, impossible to escape and to ignore, and it wouldn't change, even if he stubbornly refused to face it.

The time at the amusement park had been ruined for him after that. GIR's attempts to cheer him up had failed miserably and all he had been aware of, even after having returned to Earth, had been the emptiness inside him, the void that was, now more than ever, threatening to swallow him whole and leave nothing but an empty, barely alive shell behind.

That had been when he had made his decision. He had spent enough time around the counsellor to know that she was competent, which might have been a problem if it hadn't turned out that she was also easy to manipulate and as trustworthy as a filthy human could be. The moment to let her know the truth about his main issue, or rather, the _revised_ version that didn't include an alien Empire and an invasion, had come. Keeping on postponing was starting to make no sense at that point. Every day that he passed without a solution was a piece of his worthless life fed to the emptiness raging in his chest.

And yet, now that he was standing in front of her door, stalling, he was starting to think that, perhaps, it might not be such a good idea. There were many risks, the first above all being him slipping in one too much detail and accidentally revealing his real identity. However, wouldn't that hazard be worth it, if she could have actually _helped_ him finding a solution? He didn't want the world to find out what he was, because of the inevitable consequences. Still, on the other hand, he could have always managed to keep her quiet, one way or the other, if she had discovered the truth. Or he could have left the planet. After all, he shouldn't have found it in the first place.

He clenched his fists, feeling a spark of irritation at his doubts. He wouldn't have been able to keep his current act up forever in any case. The pros outweighed the cons, in his eyes. And he simply didn't have anything left to lose.

With that renewed determination, he finally grabbed the handle and opened the door, entering the room with purpose. He wasn't going to let himself flee now that he had made up his mind. He had faced much scarier situations than this one, or at least that was what he tried to tell himself. Deep down, however, he knew that he had never been as exposed as he would be as soon as he would start telling his tale.

Ms Xander lifted her head immediately, when she heard the door opening. She had started to think that Zim wouldn't have come. He had never been late for one of their sessions and the worry that something might have happened had touched her mind. However, she instantly relaxed when she saw him, a small welcoming smile touching her lips.

"Hello, Zim," she greeted as he sat down in his usual chair. She opened her mouth to ask him how the weekend had gone, but in that moment she noticed his odd demeanour. He looked much less lively than he usually did, more depressed even, but there was something else in his stance. His shoulders were tense, his body language screaming hostile reluctance, and he wasn't looking at her, empty violet eyes fixed instead on the surface of the desk. Still, there was also a strong hint of determination in his gaze, together with a bit of nervousness.

The woman sealed her lips immediately, forgetting the question she had been meaning to ask. She could tell that he was about to say or reveal something important, so she set down the pen she had been holding and rested her intertwined fingers in front of her, patiently waiting for him to start talking. She didn't want to risk changing his mind by accidentally setting him off. By now she knew how easy it was. A few sessions had ended much sooner than they should have because she had said or implied the wrong thing.

The Invader was quiet for almost a minute, ignoring how the atmosphere in the room was getting thicker and thicker, but in the end he finally managed to muster up the courage to start talking. "It's been two months since the start of our association, Acelynn-doc," he stated in a tone that reflected the void in his eyes. "I have decided that it's time to tell you a story. But you aren't allowed to ask questions or interrupt me until I'm done. And, even then, I still might not answer your inquiries. You just listen to Zim."

The counsellor was a bit taken aback by the harsh tone, but she nodded without hesitation. She felt a hint of excitement sparkling up in her chest. Could it be that her patient had finally decided to tell her about the issue they had been dancing around for weeks? The core of the teen's situation?

"I'm always listening," she reassured him, reining in all the inquiries that had already come to her lips. She had to meet his terms or he might decide not to give her the chance to hear this "story" of his ever again.

The alien lifted his gaze for a moment, landing it on the human. His expression was unreadable, but still intense. "I know you are. You listen to Zim as no one has done before," he said quietly, allowing himself an admission that he would never repeat again. Even if he was a Defective and a renegade, he was still Irken, after all.

His disguised eyes moved downwards again. "Once, I was given a mission, a task for which I have been training since the moment of my…birth." Damn, stupid Earthen terms. It would have been much easier if he didn't have to change the words every time to fit that hateful planet's ways. "I was sent…to this hideous place I hate to infiltrate, conquer and destroy. That's all my…my Tallest have ever wanted from me." Should have he made up some other title for his leaders? But how else could have he addressed them? Should have he pretended that they were some sort of relatives, old friends? It would have sounded so _wrong_. He couldn't bring himself to call them in any other way but the one that designed everything they were. Even if it would have surely confused the counsellor. "Or at least so I thought. Because a bit over two months ago, I discovered that not just my task, but my whole existence has been nothing but an ugly lie."

He had to take a break at that point, both because the confession had made the void in his chest feel so strong and palpable that it had almost stolen his breath away and because he needed a moment to decide how he should describe the whole matter more in detail. Perhaps it had really been a bad idea. If he couldn't explain to Ms Xander the importance of being an Invader, if he couldn't tell her about the Irken ways, how was he supposed to make her understand that he had been banished and rejected by his own people, without telling her explicitly? Maybe he had been a fool to accept this whole counselling idea in the first place. It might have done him some good, it might have allowed him to go on much better than he would have on his own during the last two months, but thinking that a _human_ could have revealed him a solution to a problem that had none was _madness_. However, now that he had started he had to finish his tale, somehow.

"I have always thought that my Tallest valued me, that they appreciated me for what I was. I believed that being sent… _here_ was a special, secret mission, one that had been entrusted to Zim because I'm the best. Instead, it wasn't like that. It has _never_ been like that," he resumed, with a hint of reluctance. With the corner of his eye, he noticed the woman reacting to his change of tone. For a moment she looked like she wanted to speak, but in the end she remained quiet and let him keep going. "They never liked me. They always thought nothing but ill things of me. That I'm incompetent, that I'm unworthy, that I'm a _menace_. Because the truth is that I'm a Defective, so I am all those things by definition. I wasn't sent here for some super secret mission. I was never meant to arrive. They had been plotting behind Zim's back for the whole time! Plotting my annihilation, my banishment, my _doom_ since the very start. All they have ever wanted was for me to be gone and for them to be rid of me."

He paused again, deciding that he had described the situation as much as he could by staying as vague as possible. The next step was trying to explain what that meant for him, which was going to be anything but easy. What was left of his pride was protesting loudly already and he wasn't even sure that he would find the words to talk about his status in a way that a human could understand. He had been aware since the very start of how different his people were from the inhabitants of Earth, but in very few occasions he had actually realised the depths that separated him from them. If they hadn't been so dumb and disinterested, he would have never managed to fit in.

"Now I am without a mission, without a place to go back to, without something that can make my existence worth living. I have been _betrayed_ by the ones I served and loved with all myself and by everything they represent." In the counsellor's eyes, he had to be speaking in riddles. He didn't even want to think about how many questions awaited ahead of him. "Now, there is just…emptiness. All my life has been a joke and I managed to arrive to this day for some obscure, crazy reason. But the truth is that I shouldn't be here. In this place, in this moment. And perhaps a part of Zim was aware of it, aware of my shameful Defective status, aware that the Tallest were just playing me. But I always refused to listen to that part. I was too confident, too proud, too determined to see things as I wanted them to be, even when they weren't. I kept deluding myself till I couldn't anymore. And now that all is lost, I don't know what I am supposed to be and to do. Go on with the mission, even if there never was one? Bring destruction as I was supposed to do, even if there will be no one to come and claim the results? Or simply give up and leave? Let the Tallest have the ending they had wished for since the very start? Zim's total, utter doom?"

He finally raised his gaze and landed it on the woman. He wasn't sure whether he had addressed those questions to her or to himself, but, since he didn't possess an answer, he found himself crazily hoping that she could have one for him. "This is the reason why Zim's behaviour has changed. I have finally opened my eyes and seen the truth. I am a Defective and an exile. I know that I have never been whom I was supposed to be. Whom I wanted to be. And I have nothing left but GIR, a place I loathed filled with people I despise and a nemesis who will surely forget about me as soon as he realises that Zim is no threat to what he has sworn to defend." He crossed his arms on his chest, frowning. "Does this tale finally satisfy your curiosity, Acelynn-doc?"

Ms Xander had managed, even if with some difficulty, to keep quiet for the whole time as the Irken spoke. There were many things that confused her about his speech, above anything else the identity of these "Tallest" Zim had kept mentioning. At first, she had thought that they might be her patient's parents, but he talked about them as if they were something much different and much _more_ than that. Still, she would have to ask him for more details, to be sure. Also, there was the label the teen had used to define himself. "Defective". It was clearly a disparaging word, but at the same time the way in which he had spoken it made it sound like a _technical term_. And then, there was everything that concerned Zim's supposed "mission of destruction" and him being an exile. What kind of task was that? And from where had he been banished? And why, exactly? Because of "his Defective status", whatever it meant?

Her eyebrows knotted together in concentration. She was starting to get the idea that her patient had built some sort of romanticized version of his real life experience, perhaps to make it more understandable and acceptable for himself. To make it sound more important in his eyes, so that his pain could be justified. It wasn't unusual, especially for young individuals, and, moreover, she had understood since the very start that Zim had a huge imagination, among the other things.

"It satisfies my…curiosity, but you should know by now that our sessions aren't about me forcing you to answer my questions, Zim. We're here to help _you_ ," she finally started to answer, deciding to reassure her patient as the first thing. Telling the tale had clearly upset him and starting right away with demanding explanations would lead them nowhere useful. "And for this reason, I want to thank you for sharing this story with me. I can understand that it wasn't easy for you. And you need to know that I don't and won't judge you. No matter what you might have done in the past, no matter if you are considered a…Defective. For what I see, there's nothing so wrong in you, Zim. You're just lost, as you said. You aren't really sure of whom you are anymore, are you?"

She paused, to give him the time to nod or shake his head, but the alien did neither, so she bit back a sigh and went on. "We all reach points in our lives where things change for the most various reasons. Something important or very bad happens to us or, more simply, we wake up one morning with a new realisation. At times, these changes are so big that they turn our whole existence upside down. They can even destroy our life. But that's not a good reason to let them crush us. Perhaps your old life, your old self might seem lost now, but you must remember that this doesn't mean that everything else is too. There's the chance to another life ahead of you, to a new meaning, a new purpose. A new…mission, if you want."

The Invader's brow raised more and more as the counsellor spoke and, by the time she was done, he was squinting at her with a mixture of suspicion, confusion and incredulity. He had almost wanted to scoff when she had stated that there was nothing wrong with him, even if he was a Defective. Evidently she had no idea of what she was talking about. No surprise there, since she was _human_. It was a nice change, though, to hear that someone didn't see just his genetic faults in him, even if she would have probably changed her mind if she had known what he was under his disguise. He had also almost laughed out aloud when she had tried to compare what he was going through to some stupid life-changing experience humans could have. It had seemed such an understatement. However, what had confused him the most had been the last part of her answer. Another chance? A new meaning? What was that supposed to mean?

"Who will give Zim a new mission if my Tallest don't want me? If they have never wanted me?" He asked, puzzled. "I could never get them to like me again, because they never liked me. And they are the ones who decide everything." Aside from what was decided by the Control Brains, but that wasn't a subject he would discuss. "No one would ever undermine their authority, especially not to help a _Defective_ out. You speak nonsense, Acelynn-doc. I don't understand."

The counsellor sighed, patiently. There it came, her patient's weird inability to grasp concepts that should have been obvious to any human being. She had wondered many times what kind of education he had been given. Now that she had heard about these guys who had been ordering him around, most likely since he was very, _very_ young, it all made a bit more sense. Considering the military-like language Zim had used, not just in their current session but in the previous ones too, she couldn't help wondering if, in truth, he had grown up inside some kind of gang, or inside a similar sort of organisation. It would have explained a lot of his behaviours and mindset.

"Let's word this in another way," she tried, discarding those thoughts for the moment. She would go back to them another time, once the teen would be readier to dig into his past. "You speak of your…Tallest as if they have owned your life and your being till this moment. Is that right?"

The alien nodded. The statement wasn't completely correct, since his existence was dictated by the rules decided by the Control Brains, more specifically, but the devotion for the Tallest was one of the traits that expressed every Irken's undying loyalty to their planet and to its values. It was encoded in every single PAK ever produced, even if he had heard that some Defectives lacked that characteristic. It had never been his case, though. Whether it was a good or a bad thing, he couldn't tell. On one side, he couldn't imagine himself deprived of his allegiance to the Empire, but, on the other hand, if he hadn't possessed it, he might have caught up with the reality of his situation much sooner and dealt with it with less emotional distress. The betrayal would have been less deep and he would have felt less torn over it.

"Good," Ms Xander resumed, unaware of his thoughts. "Now, however, your Tallest have left you behind. They have turned their backs to you. They have…let you _go_ , in a way. They don't need you, which now makes you feel awful, but there is another, brighter side to all this. You don't owe them anything anymore. They gave you up, so you don't belong to them anymore. No one is around to command you anymore. So, Zim, what I'm trying to tell you is that your new mission, your new life, they don't need to be given to you by someone else. _You_ can be the one to decide what to do and whom to be from now on. It's all up to you. You choose, you decide. You give a meaning to your life by building an existence that belongs to you and you only. All you need to do is wanting to try and work for it. A door has been shut, but it has opened so many new ones."

Zim's frown deepened even more. He had more or less understood what she was telling him, even if the bit about doors was misleading, but it sounded absurd. Irkens had been relying on hierarchy for so much time that he couldn't picture a social structure in any other way. Everyone had someone above them, someone they were supposed to follow and obey. If there was no one above him, then it could it mean that…

"Are you saying that Zim should be his own leader?" He asked, studying her carefully. He was afraid that she could be playing him, just as Red and Purple had. And yet the idea, as foreign and disorienting as it was, was _appealing_. He could still be amazing, he could even still be an Invader, if he had wanted to. He could conquer and rule, not for Irk or for his Tallest, but for himself. Or he could do something else entirely, even if he had no idea of what that "else" could be since he had trained himself all his life for one single task. He wasn't sure he could reinvent himself completely. He didn't really want to either.

The woman nodded. "Exactly, that's what I mean," she confirmed, with a small smile of approval. He was starting to understand the implications of what she was suggesting, even if it would take time for him to adapt to the idea. Perhaps he would need some guidance too. "It can be scary at first, because you'll be the only one responsible for all your choices and actions, but you can do it, Zim. _You_ can define yourself, not them. In a more constructive way, too." That last sentence gained her a weird, confused glance, but she decided to ignore it. They would get to that in time. "For now, I want you to think about what I said to you. Just think about it, consider the idea, how it makes you feel. This will be your task for this week. Can I ask my questions now?"

Zim's expression became thoughtful for a moment, but then he nodded. He was glad that she had somehow given him the permission not to act on this new revelation right away. It was too much to deal with. It had filled his ugly, gloomy reality with a new dose of horror and aw and, while they fascinated him, they were also overwhelming. Just as the discovery of the truth had been, with the difference that he didn't know how to react.

"It was part of the terms, Acelynn-doc. If you really must, ask your questions," he agreed, with just a hint of reluctance. "But I still have the right to refuse to answer."

"I won't force you to talk about what you don't feel like talking about," she reassured him, catching on the reason behind the slight hostility in his tone. "First of all. Your… _Tallest_. They aren't your parents, are they? And if not, who are they? I never questioned you about your family and you never mentioned it, so I need to ask."

The Irken made a face. "Of course, they aren't my parent units," he stated, appalled. How had the woman even got such a foolish suspicion? "Zim's parent units are…" His voice trailed off as he thought about his robotic parents. "…Fine." He didn't sound very convinced. He couldn't be, considering how faulty those useless machines where, but then he shrugged. "They are functional. More or less. They give me the…covering I need. I don't see much of them. And they have nothing to do with the Tallest. The Tallest are my…Almighty Tallest." How was he supposed to explain such a thing to a non-Irken? Especially without mentioning the alien Empire part? "They are Zim's leaders, you could say. I am…was devoted to them with all myself. I worship…ped them." He frowned a bit. "They are wise, cruel, smart, omnipotent. And _tall_." At least inside the borders of the Irken Empire. He lifted two of his claws. "They could rule the universe with just two fingers!"

The woman blinked at him, slightly caught off guard by the description. While, on one hand, it confirmed that these "leaders" weren't part of her patient's family, on the other she didn't know what to think about the idea that Zim had of them. He talked about them as if they were some sort of emperors, or even deities, in a way. It fitted the scenery of the secret mission the teen had told her about, but she wasn't sure of whom exactly they could be in real life. That information could corroborate her hypothesis of the gang, but it didn't give her any certainty. Also, the emphasis on the height was another thing that puzzled her to no end. Was it meant literally? Or did it stand for something else?

She bit back a sigh. She would have to do with his metaphors for now. After all, the most important thing, meaning the real amount of power these two individuals had over Zim, had been made very clear by her patient's choice of words.

"I…see," she said, with just the briefest hesitation, even if it wasn't true. "And, tell me. Have you ever doubted them? Even just for a moment? Have you ever felt the need to…defy them? Or at least criticise them?"

The Invader shook his head quickly at first, horrified by the question, but then he considered it carefully. "There have been a few times. When they sent me in exile the first time, to work as a Service Drone. But I came back, because I was so convinced that they wanted me back," he answered slowly, his tone careful. "And, after I found out what they really thought of me, I started to…dislike them. But they are still my Tallest. I don't think that it will ever change."

The counsellor considered pointing out that, if Zim didn't give up on considering the other two as "his Tallest", with all that it implied, he would never be able to start anew, but she decided that it was too soon. Her patient seemed absolutely persuaded of the power that his "leaders" had, on him and on everything else, so she would have to destroy that weird, obviously _pathological_ attachment he had for them and for what they represented gradually, or she would obtain the opposite result to the one she wished for. Another subject on which she would have to go back to.

"I think disliking them is the least you can do, considering what they have done to you. Despite what they still are in your eyes," she simply commented, to give the subject some closure. Then she moved to her next question. "There's another thing I'd like for you to explain to me. You keep calling yourself a "Defective". What does this word exactly mean, to you?"

The Irken hesitated. That was another inquiry he had expected to be asked. It was a bit easier than explaining to the woman whom the Tallest were, but he wasn't sure that he would have been able to describe her all the implications of the terms. He remained thoughtful for a moment, then an idea came to his mind. That could work. Humans weren't complete strangers to the concept, deep down, even if it wasn't exactly the same.

"The people you help," he started to answer with a small nod. "They are all Defectives, in different ways. They all have something wrong. In here." He tapped his temple, even if he should have probably pointed his PAK to be more precise. "In their brains. Zim is like them, to an extent. There's something wrong, _faulty_ in my…coding that makes me incapable of being what I was meant to be. Defectives are erratic, dangerous and unpredictable. They have emotions that don't fit the norm and too much… _initiative_." It was hardly an accurate description, but it was the best he could do without mentioning the faulty PAKs and the genetic errors.

"So, your Tallest have labelled you as "Defective" and rejected you because you have psychological issues?" The woman asked, a frown opening on her face. That was bullying, pure psychological abuse. That conversation was opening her eyes on why Zim had certain beliefs and certain kinds of behaviours much more than she had expected. Who knew how many other traumas she could have found, if she had been allowed to really dig in her patient's past, behind the masks he put on and the weird tales.

The alien tilted his head slightly. The human was sounding almost upset now and he didn't like it. She almost never got aggravated. Confused and exasperated yes, but not mad. Had he said something wrong? Or was she bothered on _his_ behalf? He didn't see why. After all, he had seen humans turning on each other for much less. At least the Empire had a proper reason to want to get rid of him, even if he didn't agree with it, while at times the Earth monkeys slit each other's throat just because they didn't like the other person.

"There's more to it, but yes. My personality and ways are the biggest issue for them. I seem to be able to bring…only destruction. Of the wrong kind," he answered with another shrug. He was honestly getting tired of all those questions. Luckily the time was almost up. "Do you have to ask Zim something else?"

Ms Xander sighed, reading between the lines that the teen was getting more and more eager to leave with any second that passed. She decided that she could leave the matter be for now. They had made a huge step forward that day, considering that he had finally decided to tell her, in his own, unique way, what had happened to him. The rest would come with time.

"No, Zim. We're done for now. I'll keep the other questions for another session." She shook her head and smiled at him again. "Just think about what we discussed today. And, if you feel like doing something, don't hold back, go for it, as you've been trying to do in these two months. Even if your head tells you that it goes against what you believed was your mission. Keep doing things for _Zim_ , not for the Tallest."

"I will try, Acelynn-doc," the Irken stated, getting up. His head was already starting to ache. Some of their talks had left him dazed, especially at first, but this one had been the worst ever. Being his own leader. Cursed human, she made it sound so easy, when it was anything but. He didn't even know where to start from.

The counsellor's smile grew wider and she waved him. "I know you will. Have a nice day, Zim. You did very good today."

Zim felt his antennae tingling at the praise, against his will, and a warm feeling spread in his chest. He still hadn't got used to those sincere compliments, even if the woman usually offered at least one per session. Now that he had finally experienced what it meant having someone who _really_ appreciated his efforts, without any sort of pretence, he could tell the difference compared to how he had been treated all his life.

Still, he marched out of the office without looking back, forcing himself to ignore the warmth and how pleased it made him feel. He was determined not to crumble at every little praise he was given. Ms Xander had told him that it was fine to feel flattered and to show it, especially since it was clear that he had never been properly appreciated. She had also implied that his over-dramatic, self-centred personality was his way to compensate for that lack of recognition, or some similar psychobabble. He obviously refused to think that he had a big ego just because he was insecure and because no one liked him. He was Zim and, even if that meant much less now that it had in the past, the sentence still stood for him. Though, deep down, he had admitted to himself that her words weren't _completely_ senseless.

He lifted his chin a bit, as he headed back towards his classroom. That didn't matter now. He had much else to ponder. If the woman was somewhat right, perhaps he could have got the chance to get a new mission and his existence would have stopped seeming so meaningless. It wasn't the answer he had been waiting for since the eavesdropped call, but it was something he could think of working with. It could be enough as a start. He tightened his fists, feeling more determined than he had in weeks. He would make it be enough.

* * *

Hello there!

As I mentioned in the notes to the last chapter, I've got busier with university and I really couldn't have the chapter ready before today. And I'm afraid that it will be like this for the rest of the spring and summer. I still hope to be able to be quicker with some of the chapters, but I can't promise anything!

So, with this chapter we have reached another fundamental step in the story. Honestly, I'm so glad that the humans in this universe are all so selectively blind to certain things, because it made it much easier for me (and for Zim too xD) to tell the whole story of Zim's banishment to Ms Xander. Her hypothesis is that Zim has created some sort of...fantasy version of his life, which is actually something that people with certain kind of mental disorders do, for different reasons, one of which is to make acceptable in their eyes a reality they can't face as it presents itself. So, that's her idea of what's going on and that's what she bases her thoughts and reactions on.  
Also, I tried to underline the fact that Zim has chosen to take the risk, even if reluctantly, and telling her his story mostly because he felt that he has no other choices. He is very torn over this choice of his, but he has reached a point where keeping himself distracted and putting up an act isn't enough anymore. He needs a real solution and he is looking it wherever he can, since he had been unable to find it by himself.  
I think that what I enjoyed most about writing this chapter was how hard it is to translate in human terms parts of Zim's way of thinking and mentality. It was interesting to make this comparison, even if it was mostly implied!br  
I hope you have enjoyed it!

Thanks to all my readers! Knowing that people keeps reading and enjoying my works makes me feel much more motivated. And it helps my mood in general, which is always needed! Especially whenever I see a comment. Those are what keeps me writing and are a sun ray on bad days too ^^

 **guestrev:** Yeah, both Skoodge and Tenn had their hard times dealing with Zim, even if the first was mostly willing. And I love the idea of Zim and Gaz being friends too! I'm glad you enjoyed it and the whole chapter in general ^^

 **Bumblebee63:** I'm SO glad to hear that you're enjoying the story! It means a lot to me :D I'm sorry that I have to keep you guys waiting with the updates, but I try my best. I hope that you enjoyed this chapter too and that you will like the next ones ^^ Thanks for the comment!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	16. Chapter 16

Gaz shot a look at her brother, who was sitting next to her at their usual table in the Hi Skool cafeteria. He looked pensive and the fact made her roll her eyes. She knew that look far too well. It was the one that always promised an oncoming, endless, annoying monologue. The subject, of course, was more than predictable too. _Zim_. It almost made her want to put her game down, so that she could eat as quickly as possible and go into hiding before Dib could open his big mouth and start vomiting words. _Almost._

The ever-present frown on her face deepened slightly. Judging from the intensity of her sibling's expression, the speech was without doubts going to be even longer and filled with more rambling than the usual. She shouldn't be surprised. After all, the alien had been acting a different kind of weird in the last three days. _Again._ He had been out in space for the weekend, or at least that was what her brother had told her, and, when he had come back, he had been wearing an even _darker_ expression. She had noticed too, even if she mostly didn't pay much attention to the Invader, despite the latest shift in their relationship and the start of their association. That was still Dib's job, not hers. No matter how much times she spent with the Irken and how many games they played together. She had no intention of starting to share her sibling's self-appointed duty.

Then, half way through Monday, there had been another change. Zim had started to sport a distracted, thoughtful look, which had stayed for the following days. In the girl's eyes, it was better than the empty one that had become his norm in the last two months, because it meant that the moron had stopped _sulking_ , but the Irken had also begun to avoid both her and Dib. He hadn't come to their now officially shared hiding place during lunch breaks and she had seen him abruptly changing his path whenever he spotted one of them. She briefly wondered once again, against her will, what could be up with the Invader this time. She hated to admit it, but she was almost starting to understand why her brother worried so much at times.

"Hey, Gaz," the older ten started in that very moment, interrupting her thoughts.

The girl groaned, feeling the strong temptation to shut him up before he could even start, but she didn't have to because, out of the blue, a paper bag fell in front of one of the two empty chairs at their table and Zim, of all people, took a seat there. The alien's expression was determined and he was clearly trying to appear casual, failing spectacularly. He didn't have a trail of food with him, but just a plate that he had most likely stolen from the kitchen.

Gaz blinked, a hint of surprise distending her expression for a moment, while, by her side, Dib was openly gaping. The Invader never sat with anyone during lunch and, when he still bothered to come to the cafeteria, a habit that he had seemed to have lost in the last month, he had always stayed as far as possible from them. Not to mention that the whole situation was made even weirder by the fact that the Irken had been avoiding them like the plague till an hour before.

The silence stretched among them, growing more and more uncomfortable, but no one seemed to want to break it. Gaz went back to her game and food, even if she kept shooting looks at their unexpected guest, while Dib kept staring at his nemesis, his astonishment not appearing to be diminishing, wondering if he was hallucinating. Zim, on his part, just forced himself to ignore the humans' glances and opened his paper bag, dropping on the plate the sandwiches that GIR had made him for lunch. He glared at the food, as if in that way he could make sure that it wouldn't poison him, and then he realised that he was missing a fork. He wouldn't have needed it to eat, but everyone else in the room had one, so, in his mind, he was supposed to do too. The frown on his face deepened as he looked around before choosing, in the end, to just stretch his arm across the table and steal Dib's.

The gesture seemed to finally awake said human from his dazed state and Dib shook his head, bringing a hand up to his eyes to rub them, in one last attempt to make sure that he wasn't seeing things. "Hey, that's my fork! Get your own!" He protested, even if in that moment he didn't give a damn about having his silverware stolen. "And what the hell are you doing here?"

"Zim is eating lunch, Dib-worm," the Invader replied, easily, munching around a mouthful of sandwich. It wasn't as bad as it looked, even if GIR had to have put something weird in it, because he could taste a flavour he couldn't recognise. "You are so stupid at times. With that big head of yours, one would expect you to have a brain."

"My head is _not_ big!" Dib let out a frustrated sound. "That's not what I meant, you jerk. And you know it," he half hissed, half sighed, bringing his fingers to his temple. "Why are you sitting with us? You never sit with us. Or anyone else. And you've been avoiding me for almost three days. I have all the reasons to be suspicious."

The Irken made a face and took another big bite of his lunch, a stubborn expression on his face. It was easy to tell that he didn't really want to answer those questions, but he was aware that his rival would have bugged him if he hadn't offered at least the shadow of a reply.

"I am messing with your head. It's all part of my latest, amazing plan," he stated after a moment of thinking, nodding to himself, clearly satisfied with his reply even if it was hardly true.

He had spent a lot of time _thinking_ , after his last talk with Ms Xander. He was hardly at ease with the ideas she had laid in front of him during the session, but he was still trying to do as he had been told and attempting to wrap his mind around them. It hadn't been going very well, though. Taking decisions without a concrete aim in mind, without orders and rules to follow was anything but an easy job. Most of what he had done since he had been hatched had been dictated by the need to fulfil a request or complete an assigned task. That was how Irkens reasoned and went about pretty much everything. Not having one to guide his actions made it extremely hard for him, if not impossible.

So, after having pondered the issue at length, he had come to the conclusion that he had to find a new mission for himself as first thing. The rest should have followed more smoothly after that. However, since the time to deal with his new self-leadership hadn't come yet, he had diverted his attention to the other assignment the counsellor had given him. Namely, doing things Zim felt like doing. And that had translated in having his robot making him a lunch he could eat and sitting at the Membrane siblings' table. The latter idea might have seemed out of character, but he had a hidden second aim. Besides, Dib's expression had made the foolishness completely worth it.

"A very good reason," Gaz interjected, before her brother could answer the alien's words. Her eyes were fully focused on the game once again and her tone was mostly flat. "How many lessons do you have in the afternoon, Zim?"

The Irken tilted his head and squinted at her suspiciously, slowly putting his sandwich down. Despite the extent of their recent association, he was still wary whenever the girl showed the slightest hint of interest in what he did. "I have two more student training sessions," he answered in a cautious tone, studying her unrevealing expression. "Why do you ask, Gaz-sister? What interest do you have in Zim's business?!"

She ignored his tone and the slightly high-pitched voice in which he had spoken the last question. "Good. Then you come home with me after this stupid school day is over," she said, making it sound like an order. "I got the multiplayer version of " _Invasion of the Galactic Grasshoppers_ " the other day. I'll kick your ass at that too."

A smirk opened on the Invader's face at the title of the game. "Oh, you think so, Earthen smeet? I happen to be quite good at that particular game," he boasted, with confidence. He had no real reason to be so bold, because it was almost a physical law that Gaz would beat him at every possible videogame, but he refused to admit the truth, no matter how many defeats he would receive. His grin widened. Having access to the Membrane residence and its inhabitants would make it easier for him to get the information he was planning to obtain. "So, I wouldn't be so sure that you will beat the Mighty Zim this time."

The girl didn't even waste her time to scoff at him, deciding that she would let the facts speak for her, while Dib was gaping once again, this time at his sister. It wasn't the first time that she had invited the Irken over, but it hadn't happened often enough for him to get used to it. Assuming that he ever would, because, for how he saw it now, not even a thousand years would have been enough for him to grow accustomed to the sight of his nemesis on his couch, playing games with his sister more or less peacefully. However, one thing he had grasped already. Protesting was useless, as often happened whenever Gaz had made up her mind about something.

"Shut up, Dib," the girl growled out of the blue, as if she had been reading his thoughts. Not that it was so hard. Her brother was awfully predictable most of the times.

"I didn't say anything!" He pointed out, but without too much heat in his voice. He shook his head. He would need all his patience that afternoon, when he would have an overexcited alien screaming in his living room, perhaps accompanied by his hyperactive robotic sidekick. "Am I invited to this game party or will you confine me in my room like the last time?"

"Don't sulk, Dib. You were in the way last time. You should be glad that I was too busy, or I would have hurt you. Badly." Gaz shot his sibling a quick glare. "But you should join us. I'll get bored of winning easily, sooner or later. And then it will be _your_ turn to entertain the space dummy." She nodded towards Zim, without looking at him.

The Irken perked up. "You dare to challenge Zim, worm child?" He exclaimed loudly without even waiting for his nemesis's comeback, jumping on his feet and pointing a clawed finger towards the older teen. Perhaps he would lose against the girl, or rather, she would almost surely _wreck_ him, but he wouldn't be defeated by the scythe-haired boy. He refused to allow such a thing, whether it was a fight for supremacy or a stupid videogame.

His voice was so loud that half of the students in the cafeteria turned to look at him, but, as soon as they realised who was screaming, they went back minding their own business. Just the two Skool freaks having one of their usual arguments. Nothing so out of the ordinary, even if lately those events had started to happen with less frequency. Not that anyone minded, since it was nice, from time to time, to have lunch without having to listen to hysterical yelling and watching out for random flying objects.

"You foolish human!" Zim went on, oblivious of the attention he had momentarily attracted, launched single-mindedly in his speech. "I will rain _doom_ over you, crush you under my…fist, vaporise you and…and…I will conquer you!"

Dib rolled his eyes as the alien began his tirade and reached out to take a gulp of water, but he soon regretted the latter action. The liquid went down the wrong pipe for the shock as he heard the last screamed sentence. He found himself coughing hard, face reddening both because of it and because of the wave of embarrassment that hit him at the memories conjured up by those words. The current situation was completely different and the phrase had a whole other meaning this time, but he couldn't stop his mind from flashing the image of wide, dark, possessive magenta eyes and the feeling of teeth and claws grazing his skin. It was _crazy_ how well he could still recall the feeling of the Irken's body pressed against his own after over two months. His thoughts had touched the memory a few times since the kiss had happened, but he had instantly chased them away, not allowing himself to linger on it, not even for the briefest moment, in the hope that, eventually, he would have become able to pretend that he had successfully forgotten about it. Yet, the event seemed to be seared indelibly in his mind.

He set the glass down and brought both his hands to his face, mostly to hide, with little success, how flushed he was. The coughing fit was slowly stopping and he was glad when he could finally breathe properly once again. He licked his lips slightly, clearing his throat, and then hazarded a look in the Invader's direction. The other was looking at him, puzzled by his reaction, but as soon as their gazes met his rival's expression shifted with both realisation and horror. The teen could have sworn that, for a moment, the skin under the alien's fake violet eyes had turned slightly _purplish_. Was that the hint of a…blush?

Zim had taken a few moments to catch up on his slip, so at first Dib's violent reaction had made him raise a brow. He had spotted a bit of annoyance in his nemesis's expression when he had started to describe his inescapable future defeat, but the irritation had abruptly been replaced by a much different feeling as soon as he had finished his little speech. The human's face had become incredibly red and he had started to cough hard, choking on his water. The Irken had almost smirked at the sight, remembering how many times the teen had had fun at his expenses by pouring that very same liquid on him, consciously causing his skin to burn and melt. It would have been appropriate if the other had risked his life because of the substance. He should really try to drown him, sometimes. Just to get a fitting payback.

Those entertaining thoughts, however, were cut short when Dib lifted his gaze and his amber eyes met Zim's fake violet ones. The Invader blinked once and then he was suddenly hit with the memory of the last time he had seen the same dose of embarrassment and awkwardness in them. The "Freaky Accident" caused by his radiations "poisoning". Pieces of almost forgotten memories erupted in his mind, ruining all the most successful efforts he had made to remove the episode from his memory. The silvery pallor of the human's skin washed by the starlight, the burning heat all over his skin, the strong impulse to possess, the taste of blood and the stinging of the other's saliva on his tongue. His face contorted in dismay as he realised what he had just said and he instantly lifted his hands, dropping the sandwich, his face heating up with humiliation and a bit of that same weird warmth he had experienced while they had been up in space together.

"That's not…That's not what Zim meant!" He screeched in consternation, shaking his head and waving his hands frantically. Somehow, his words made him feel even worse, instead of making the whole situation better and, judging from his rival's expression, they were having the same effect on the human. "I didn't mean conquering you in the _disgusting_ way! But conquering in the…non-disgusting, Invader way! That's it!"

Dib let out a frustrated groan, fully hiding his face in his fingers for a moment. "Zim, shut up. You're making it worse," he sighed, exasperated and still flustered. He hoped that Gaz wouldn't ask questions or make assumptions. He really didn't want to have to explain his sister how he had ended up making out with his alien nemesis. "We had a deal. Never talking about… _that_ again. Let's…Let's stick to that, alright?" He breathed in deeply. "Can I have my fork back now?"

As much as he hated to admit it, the Irken couldn't have agreed more with the teen's solution. They should really just forget about that small slip as they had, or rather _should_ have, forgotten about the accident in the first place. So, he forewent the first part of the human's words and just held the fork tightly to his chest. "This is Zim's fork, Earth monkey. Get another one!"

His rival's eye twitched in renewed irritation. "You stole it from me! And you aren't even using it! You're eating a sandwich!"

"Shut up, Dib-stink! I need it because…because I say so!"

"Can you be more irritating, space scum?!"

From her seat, Gaz rolled her eyes again and snorted. " _Morons_."

She hadn't really grasped what exactly had happened with them and the verb "to conquer", but she didn't doubt that it was something profoundly idiotic. Not that she cared, especially not now that she had almost reached the boss of the level she was on.

So, she didn't even spare them a look when her brother stood up and stretched over the table, trying to pry the fork out of the alien's fingers and almost ending up knocking his own lunch off in the process. She simply scoffed and, for the umpteenth time in her life, she wondered if, perhaps, it wouldn't have been better if an alien invader, one who was actually _competent_ , had come to Earth and put everyone out of their stupid misery. Maybe helping the two idiots stopping Tak a few years before had been a mistake from her part. Or perhaps she should consider conquering the planet herself. She would have been able to, if she had wanted. The fact was that she was hardly interested enough to make the necessary efforts.

 **IZ ╗**

"This game is _broken_!"

The console flew towards the screen, but Dib managed to grab it before it could actually hit the television. Gaz would have got furious if Zim had damage her gaming platforms and she would have taken it out on both the alien and him, just because she could. He let out a relieved sigh and rolled his eyes, handing the device back to his sulking rival, who had just lost for the fifth time in a row, before taking his place on the couch next to him. On his other side, the girl was wearing the hint of a small smirk on her face, which made her ever-present frown much less pronounced.

"We almost made it this time," he offered, ignoring the scoff coming from his sister. "I mean, if you had listened to me when I told you to jump, we could have…"

"Zim doesn't have to listen to you, Dib-worm! You know _nothing_ of strategy and battles! _I_ am the trained Invader here!" The Irken interrupted him abruptly, shooting him a murderous glare. He was starting to get bitter over all those defeats and the human attempting to lecture him wasn't helping his temperament. Especially if he criticised his abilities. Game or not, it stung badly, now that he knew that he was a Defective and what his people really thought of him. "I can handle myself just fine! I don't need anyone!"

Dib, unaware of the real reasons behind those words, felt himself getting annoyed in turn. He had tried to be helpful for once, since, when they had played together against Gaz the previous times, they had done nothing but fighting and losing even faster. However, the Invader's demeanour was turning his attempts in a futile waste of time and energy.

"We've seen how much your _training_ has played off," he shot back, a hint of cruel sarcasm in his voice this time. "Fine, do everything on your own. Keep _losing_ , space scum. You must really like being walked over by everyone, since that's what happens every single time. Why should you accept the advice of someone who has more information than you do! That's definitely _not_ the smart thing to do."

The words stabbed Zim even deeper than the previous implications the teen hadn't really made, making both rage and hurt fill his chest. He set the console down with a bit too much force and tore the wig off his head, shoving it between his body and the armrest. It was late afternoon and Professor Membrane wouldn't be coming home till the next morning, so he really didn't need his disguise.

"Shut up, filthy human," he growled, taking out his contact lenses and slipping them inside his PAK. "Zim will show you my real skills now!" He grabbed the control unit once again, magenta eyes locked on the screen as he watched Gaz resetting the match.

The scythe-haired boy shot his nemesis a slightly surprised look as he saw him taking off his disguise so carelessly, but he didn't comment. They all knew that he had more or less given up on exposing the Irken for what he was, trying to do it just for keeping his reflexes sharp, just as Zim seemed to be doing with his fake plans to conquer the Earth. They kept each other on the edge, showing off their skills and abilities, but just for the sake of it, without any real intent of exploiting the advantages they gained each time. The teen was still wondering where that weird truce would lead them eventually, but for now the situation seemed to be stalling, so he didn't worry about it. Not excessively at least.

The heavy silence reigned over them for the first few minutes of gaming, during which the girl proceeded to systematically beating the crap out of the alien's character, until Dib couldn't hold himself back anymore when he saw the next blow coming and ended up instinctively shouting out the combination of commands Zim should have keyed in to avoid it. The real surprise, though, was that the Invader actually did as he had told him this time, hitting the sequence with flawless precision and timing. Gaz's character flew across the screen, her life points descending drastically for the effectiveness of the blow.

The three stared at the television for a long moment, all of them paralysed with surprise. No one had seen that coming. The girl's eyes were wide open for the shock, the older teen was gaping, incredulous, and the alien had a look on his face that seemed to say that he didn't believe his eyes. The atmosphere got thicker and thicker with confusion and astonishment, until Zim was the one to break the stasis, jumping on his feet, arms stretched towards the ceiling.

"VICTORY FOR ZIM!" He shouted so loudly that the whole neighbourhood had probably heard him, before letting his head fall back and launching himself in one of his mad, evil laughs, which resounded just as roaring in the living room.

"And for the Dib," he added in a quieter voice, once he was satisfied with his cackling and, especially, noticing the murderous glare that Gaz was addressing him. His tone held a hint of reluctance, but he still addressed his nemesis a small victorious smirk. It was undeniable that part of the merit belonged to the human, no matter how much he disliked admitting it.

The teen blinked at the offered recognition, caught off guard for the second time in a row, but he couldn't help mirroring the grin he was being addressed. "You see, space boy? Team work is an actual thing," he joked as the Irken sat back down next to him. His previous irritation had faded almost completely, but he still had a hard time believing that the other had listened to him. He hesitated for a moment and then lifted his hand, offering the palm to his rival. "High five?"

Zim stared at the hand, confusion spreading all over his face. "What is that? Some weird, disgusting human ritual?" He questioned, squinting warily at the palm set in front of his face. "Or are you trying to play a trick on Zim, Dib-beast?!"

The human sighed, rolling his eyes. "No, Zim, no trick. It's…It's just what humans do when they manage to do something well by cooperating. You must have seen people doing it at Skool. You…You slap your hand against the other person's one. It's for…celebrating," he tried to explain, feeling more and more stupid for having offered such a thing to his alien nemesis of all people. He didn't know what had got into him. Even if there had been a shift in his relationship with the Irken, it didn't mean that they were suddenly friends. After all, Zim was nowhere as nice with him as he had been while under the effect of the radiations, even if at times he seemed to choose to willingly spend time with him peacefully. In most occasions the Invader still focused on crushing him and endangering his planet. He started to lower his hand. "Never mind. Forget about it."

The alien tilted his head as his rival clumsily explained the gesture and its meaning. He vaguely remembered seeing students at Skool doing this "high five" ritual in the corridors, even if he had never paid much attention to it. After all, until that moment, no one had ever offered him to share the gesture. He noticed how the human's expression slowly crumbled as he spoke, till he ended up looking slightly dejected and moving his arm away. Zim's eyes dropped down to his own hand, claw clenching and unclenching slightly, and then he lifted it, slapping it against the teen's retreating one before it had got out of reach.

"Like that?" He questioned, almost curiously.

Dib blinked at the feeling of a thick glove connecting with his palm and he froze his movements, amber eyes shooting back on the Irken. "Uh, yeah, like that," he hesitantly confirmed, before forcing himself to recover from his daze. "Don't you have any similar gesture on Irk? I mean, a symbolic one with which you celebrate together or something?"

The Invader looked pensive for a moment, crossing his arms on his chest, then he shook his head. "No. Irkens work on their missions on their own, most of time. We fight together too, of course, but everyone has their task and there is nothing worth celebrating just because you have done your job," he answered, narrowing his eyes slightly. "The only…tradition we have is that the Invader who has conquered the planet gets to fire the first cannon at the start of the Organic Sweep of said planet. It's considered a great honour, especially if you're the first of all." An honour he had dreamt of for years and that now he would never get to experience. He couldn't help feeling bitter at the thought. "We have no things like your "high five". It's unnecessary." He looked down at his claws. "Also because we don't have five fingers."

The teen nodded slowly, feeling both fascination and a bit of dread when his rival mentioned the Organic Sweep. He knew what it was and the idea of something like happening to the Earth gave him the chills. Despite their many flaws, there was no denying that the Irkens were incredibly competent when it came to blowing things up. Especially planets. Luckily, the Armada had never come near his home world. Aside from that one time when he and Zim had dragged the Massive there by force all way from another Galaxy.

"I see," he mumbled, chasing those dreadful thoughts away. Then he grinned a bit more, seeing that the alien was still glaring at his hand. "Well, now you can do it too. Here on Earth is a pretty common gesture. You can call it "high three", if you like it better."

Zim shot him a displeased look, but he couldn't answer because Gaz interjected in that very moment. She had had enough of the other two's awkward attempts of doing something different from trying to kill each other and she was still pissed for the blow she had received. She fully intended to beat them both up, in the game and, perhaps, even in real life.

"If you're done with all this idiocy, I still want to play," she stated dryly. "So focus and prepare to be destroyed. I'm tired of wasting my time waiting for you and for your intercultural exchanges. If you must talk about your stupid things, do it when I'm not with you."

"Gee, Gaz, calm down," Dib said, but he hurried to grab the console and to hand it back to Zim, not really wanting to test his sister's patience. No good result ever came out of it.

The Invader grabbed the control unit and locked his eyes back on the screen, a confident look on his face. "Don't be so sure, Gaz-sister. You might be the one to be destroyed this time!" He claimed with pride, elbowing his rival hard in the ribs to force him to turn to him. "Pay attention to Zim, worm child. You might get the chance for another "high five" thingie."

The rest of the match was spent without talking, if one didn't count the alien's Irken curses, the girl's growls and the older teen's shouted suggestions. In the end, Gaz won that game too, but she had an evidently harder time than she had had till that moment. Zim and Dib seemed to have found their messy way to communicate properly and, while she wouldn't say that they had hindered her, she still had to put much more effort in her playing to kick their asses. She wasn't pissed, though. It had been much more fun than yet another easy win and she couldn't help musing that it might have been almost worth it to help the two morons getting along better, if it meant that she could benefit from it. Keyword being _almost_.

"Tell Zim, Gaz-sis…Gaz," Zim started out of the blue as they prepared for another match and after Dib had got up to retrieve something eatable from the kitchen. He had realised that he still hadn't tried to get the information he wanted, since he had been too focused on trying to win. "What will be your chosen life mission when you will no longer be a smeet?"

The girl turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. "What kind of foolish things are you rambling about?" She questioned, a hint of suspiciousness in her voice. The alien had never used her name plain and simple, without anything attached to it, before. "Chosen life mission? Is this your weird, dorky, alien way to ask me what I want to do when I'll grow up?"

The Irken felt slightly irritated for all the insults he had been addressed, but for once he just made a face and didn't comment. He wasn't trying to get into a fight, because it would compromise his plans. He had thought that trying to understand how humans decided what they would do with their lives might help him figuring out how _he_ was supposed to choose his new, self-entrusted mission. Their way of reasoning was so different from the Irken one, but thinking "out of the box", as the foolish Earthen expression stated, could be what he needed in that moment. The Membrane siblings were the only ones who might have chosen to answer him, instead of dismissing his questions and laughing at him, so he had picked them up as his targets, even if it might have made his nemesis suspicious.

"Yes. Your future life goal. What will it be?" He nodded, pressing his inquiry and ignoring the slightly odd look he was getting.

The girl eyed the alien for one more moment, wondering why his randomness had brought him there, before deciding that she didn't care. "It's none of your business," she started to answer, looking back towards the screen. "But since I don't want you to bug me, I'll tell you anyway. I want to become a game designer and tester."

Zim blinked slowly at her answer. He could see where the choice came from, considering Gaz's passion for everything that concerned videogames. But could that be the only reason behind her decision? That she selfishly _enjoyed_ it? Without any greater consequence for the Earthen society? Humans were definitely weird. "Why have you chosen that mission?"

Gaz shot him another look, her gaze seeming to ask if he had lost the very small bit of intelligence he possessed. "Because I _like_ videogames. And I like programming too," she replied, her tone highlighting how much stupid she thought that his question was. In truth, her motivations were much more complicated, but she didn't have any intention to explain why she had become so obsessed with games in the first place. She had never talked about it with anyone and she wouldn't start with the idiotic being trying to destroy her planet, especially not while her brother was within earshot. "That kind of job allows me to get paid to play videogames all day. And I don't have to deal with too many idiots either. It's perfect."

"Why are you asking these questions, Zim?" Dib interjected as he walked back in the room carrying a package of chips and two cans of soda, the suspicion that the alien had been expecting evident in his voice. "What are you trying to do?"

Zim's eyes moved on his rival. "I'm just curious to see how your stupid, inferior, human heads work," he stated with a shrug. It wasn't a lie, all in all. The fact that he had a second aim that was deeper than curiosity didn't matter. "And they make no sense to me." He made a face, hitting a few buttons on his console. "What about you, Dib-worm? What's your life mission?"

The teen didn't look very convinced, but still sat down in his spot, leaving the snacks on the coffee table. "After all these years you still don't know?" He asked, incredulous and a bit offended too. He had been screaming that he wanted to become a paranormal investigator in the Irken's face since day one, but the other seemed not to remember at times. It stung a bit, even if he would never admit it. Did the Invader really care so little about what he liked and didn't like?

His nemesis rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, your monsters and space stuff," he said in a dismissive tone. He didn't want to hear a tirade on all the cases and the almost-proofs the human had collected over the years. He was interested in the mind process that had led him there, since Gaz's answer hadn't been satisfactory at all. "And you want to do that just because you like it, too?"

Dib shook his head. "It's almost never that easy, space boy," he started, clearly more inclined to go in-depth with his explanation than his sister had. "I mean, it's true that I _love_ it. I've always been fascinated by paranormal stuff, and I've always _believed_. During the years I've found so much evidence, at times so obvious in my eyes that I can't understand why other people can't see it." He shot the alien sat next to him a meaningful glance. The other was the most striking example. "People always labelled me as crazy for my beliefs. The other kids have always thought that I'm a freak. At times I…I have doubted, wondered if I should listen to Dad and move on to "real science", but…at the end of the day I _know_ that I'm right. Especially now that I've met _you_ , Zim."

He remembered very well that night on the roof, when he had intercepted the transmission of the incoming invasion, and the day, six months later, when the disguised green alien had walked into his classroom.

"One day I'll prove it to the world. I'll prove them all that I was right the whole time and that _they_ are the idiots. All their bullying and mocking won't stop me from seeking the truth out. For my sake, but for everyone else's too," he finished with determination, clenching his fists. His amber eyes were sparkling a bit. "That's why I want to become a paranormal investigator. To prove myself and open the eyes of the world to a whole new, unexplored realm of possibilities."

"You won't succeed in exposing Zim, Dib-stink," the Irken stated as first thing, more out of habit than because he cared to affirm the fact. It was part of their usual script and the words slipped out of mouth almost instinctively. His mind, however, was elsewhere. He found that he could relate a bit better with the motivations his rival had offered him. They made more sense. After all, his people were conquering the universe to prove a point too. And also, more simply, because _they could_.

"But Zim also thinks that you shouldn't give up on chasing me. It's the only thing that makes you less stupid than most of your species," he added with a small hint of what might have been taken for approval, if it had come from someone else. "And when I destroy this ball of dirt I'll prove you right anyway. Even if there will be no one left to see it."

The teen scoffed at the threats, which he decided to be empty for the most part, at least in that moment, and chose not to comment on them. "We'll see, alien scum," he simply said with a shrug. "Did my answer help you understanding better how our "stupid human heads" work?" Could it really be so hard for the alien to see? Were their ways of thinking truly so different? A thought hit him. He had never asked before, but now that the question had popped in his mind he realised how much he craved to know. "Zim…Why are you an Invader?"

"Not so much. I am starting to think that your stinky human logic is just stupid," the Irken answered without even trying to hide the distasted in his voice, but his half disgusted expression fell as he heard the human's inquiry, surprise blossoming in his eyes. The question was at the same time obvious and hard to answer. "I was _trained_ to be one. Irkens are to report for duty as soon as their PAKs are attached to their backs, after the hatching. We all have an initial period of military training, which lasts for the time of our smeethood, and then we're sent to train for our specific assignment. Zim became part of the Elite corps, then passed his examinations and became an Invader."

Dib frowned. As interesting as the information he was receiving was, he couldn't help thinking that he wouldn't have liked to live in a society where he didn't have the chance to decide what to do with his life. Especially considering that Irkens who failed were hardly given a second chance, or at least that was what he had deduced from his encounter with Tak, four years before. She had been encoded to be some sort of janitor just because she hadn't been able to take her examination. It hadn't even been her fault.

"That sounds…pretty awful," he commented in the end. "So you didn't choose to be an Invader? They just…made you one?"

Zim's face turned outraged. "Every Irken wants to be an Invader, foolish human! Worlds conquest and domination is what our race is made for. It's in our _coding_ ," he claimed with a disapproving clicking sound. How dense was his nemesis if he hadn't grasped that obvious fact yet? "I worked hard to become an Invader and to prove myself worth of being one." He didn't mention the fact that he had been damned to fail since the start because of his Defective status, but those words were still true. He had done everything in his power to show his value and to pass his training. At times the results had been _literally_ disastrous, but he still had tried harder than everyone else. "Zim _wanted_ to be one too."

The teen still looked a bit unconvinced, because he didn't really know if having a computer downloading data in your brain and persuading you that you were made for something counted as free will, but he didn't dare to talk back. The Invader was starting to get pissed, he could tell by how his antennae had lowered against his skull and, especially, by the way in which he was glaring, and he didn't want to cause his rival to shut him out once again. His nemesis had been very forthcoming with information that day, whether out of pride or for some other obscure reason, and he didn't want to say something that could make the other choose to never speak about his people again.

"Then it's not completely different from what we humans do. We try to get the job we want and like. The one we are…made for, in a way," he chose to say, instead, studying the Irken's expression carefully. He couldn't help thinking that there was much more than curiosity behind Zim's line of inquiring, but he couldn't understand what exactly the alien was aiming for. "The real difference is that, while your people are selected and trained specifically for said job, by someone who's above them, mine isn't assigned to it. Each human has to figure out what they want and then try on their own to be assigned to the place in society they have chosen."

Zim remained quiet after that last explanation, a pensive expression on his face. He had almost forgotten about the game he was supposed to be playing as he and Dib discussed, which had led him to be quite behind in the match compared to Gaz, but for once he found that he didn't care. His mind was absorbed in pondering the data he had collected. They didn't really make things much clearer for him, because, for the most, they had just underlined what Ms Xander had told him about making his own choices. It was nothing he hadn't heard before.

Something that his rival had said while explaining why he wanted to be a paranormal investigator, though, had made him reconsider his views on the matter. Previously he had come to the conclusion that, as first thing, he needed a task that could guide his choices and give sense to his life once again. After all, being marked as a soldier first and as an Invader later had been the one thing to define his whole being. However, what if that was the wrong approach in his current situation? What if he should have instead firstly decided what he _really_ wanted to be and then act to achieve that? If the task was the consequence of the meaning, and not vice versa?

* * *

Hello everyone!

I've tried to be a bit quicker with this chapter and I think I succeeded. Kind of ^^" Uh, as first thing, I want to thank you all for being patient with me and being ready to bear me taking my time and stuff with this story. It means a lot to me, also because it means that you're interested in this enough to be willing to wait. So, thank you, for real.

Now, about this chapter, as you might have understood, it's mostly about characters bonding. I wanted to write something lighter after Zim's big tale from the previous one (and also because I really need to cheer me up these days), and it came out a bit on the...fluffy side, I could say? Even if I still wanted to put some focus on Zim trying to figure out his moves from now on. He is going to have a hard time working out what to do with Ms Xander's advice, but well...The events of this story are based A LOT about weird, unexpected coincidences happening in the wrong moments and places, so...I might indirectly resolve this one issue that way too xD  
Also, I couldn't help myself. I brought up that infamous kiss again after I haven't mentioned it for almost...uh, ten chapters? I think it has been long enough xD It was mostly for humour's sake (or at least that was the intention, since humour isn't my forte), but I also kind of wanted to let you know that the scene hasn't been forgotten. There has just been a lot going, so it slipped in the background! (Small, mostly irrelevant detail, but I was kinda torn over the colour of Zim's blush. I kept tying "bluish" and then changing it "purplish" and so on, till I sort of settled for the second. Just out of curiosity, do you guys have preferences? It would help me choose xD)  
And, yes, I wrote another gaming scene. Bear with me, I'm in love with the idea of Gaz vs Zim at videogames. And this time the boys managed to do some teamwork, unlike the previous time! xD And it gave me a chance to create a small, awkward intercultural exchange moment, before the real confrontation about what Zim's aim for that situation has been all along.

Alright, I've rambled enough. I keep telling myself that I must stop boring you with all my comments but...I kinda cant ^^"  
Anyway! Thanks to all the people who have been reading and favouring this story! I truly appreciate the interest you're showing in my work! And I want to thank in particular the people who stops by and leave me comments. It's a...weird period for my creativity and I feel very...demotivated and insecure about my writing, so your comments help a lot, guys. More than I can say with words!

 **guestrev** : Yeah, he has tried really hard to be blind to the truth of his reality once again...and it hasn't been doing him any good! I kind of like making Acelynn guess things right, because she's supposed to be good at her job, but since she misses the key fact (meaning Zim being an alien) she can't imagine the real reasons behind all the mess! As for Zim's new mission, who knows. We'll have to wait and see! Thank you for the review!

 **Guest** : Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying the story!

I hope you have enjoyed this chapter too! Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	17. Chapter 17

Zim moodily glared at the falling rain. He hated it with passion, especially when it forced him to waste his time stuck somewhere, waiting for the clouds to dissipate. In that moment he was standing under the awning that covered the main entrance of the Hi Skool building. His mood hadn't been stellar even before the water had started pouring down from the sky and the sight had just made him gloomier and gloomier. He was _very_ tempted to call GIR and have the robot picking him up with the umbrella he actually had at his base, but the place was still crowded and it would have been too much of a risk. So, he didn't have much of a choice. His eyes locked on the thick clouds. He just hoped that the storm wouldn't last for hours.

A few days had passed since the afternoon spent gaming with Gaz and Dib at the Membrane residence, but he was still very far from finding a concrete answer to all the questions that his counsellor's observations had brought up. Speaking of the women, he had had only another session with her after their last talk, right before the weekend, since she had been busy in the first part of the current week. Moreover, Ms Xander had preferred to focus on other subjects, deeming that he wasn't ready to make any step forwards in the solution of his main issue, and that had hardly helped Zim's mood since, in his eyes, such a useless delay was, for the most, a waste of the time he should have used to gather the replies he needed. There had been no way to change her mind, though, so he had been forced to resign himself to answer her inquires.

He almost scoffed as he mentally reviewed the session. For some obscure reason, she had chosen to drown him in queries concerning Red and Purple, of all things. The woman had soon given up on trying to make him explain the Tallest's role and had started to ask more personal questions instead. How he had met them, for how long he had known them, what other "missions" he had carried out for them. She had looked very surprised when Zim had revealed her that the three of them where of the same age and that they had trained together. Apparently, she had expected the Tallest to be older than him, which underlined another huge difference between Irkens and humans. The value and the meaning their two races gave to time. The inhabitants of Earth could hardly live for ninety years, a hundred if they were very lucky, while the Invader's people, if they didn't get killed, could survive in health for _centuries_. That considered, it was no wonder that age was almost meaningless in the Irken society. Most of them didn't even care to know how old they were.

The woman's puzzlement hadn't lasted for long, though. She had recovered quite quickly and had changed the nature of her questions a bit, starting to ask about the experiences he had shared with the other two, instead of inquiring about what kind of tasks and orders they had assigned to him, before moving to tell him to describe his usual interactions with them. One particular piece of the conversation had remained stuck in his head.

"So, they sent you away because, in their eyes, you failed your task in the worst way possible, but you came back, thinking that they wanted you back?" The counsellor had inquired, after he had told her, very vaguely, about the unfortunate ending of Operation Impending Doom I. "Why? Why did you think that you'd be welcome back? After all, they hadn't even invited you."

"Because I thought that they valued Zim and that there was no way they would have started the…mission without me," he had answered, the confidence fading fast from his voice as he spoke. Now that he knew the truth, he had felt incredibly stupid thinking about all the obvious clues he had missed. "I thought that…that the invitation had simply got lost."

"Even after they had told you that you weren't supposed to be there? After they tried to give you a…sandwich instead of an assignment? The thought that something was off didn't touch you?" She had insisted, her tone careful and firm at the same time. She had been acting as if she had been probing a still open wound and, in a way, it had been exactly what she had been doing, even if on a metaphorical level. "That's when they brought up the "secret mission" and sent you here, correct? The lack of details didn't seem weird to you?"

Zim had lowered his head, feeling humiliated at having all those facts pushed in his face. He had imagined oh-so-clearly the kind of laughter that his Tallest had to have had behind his back once he had left for a planet that wasn't supposed to be there, with a broken robot and an outdated vehicle. He had felt himself burning with rage and shame.

"I was… _obviously_ in denial," he had growled out, frustrated.

Ms Xander had sighed at his reaction. "Zim, I'm not judging you. You were convinced that they were your friends, that they cared. You were a kid with a lot of good intentions and trust, who wanted badly to prove himself. And they are your…Tallest," she had tried to soothe him, her voice gentle and open once again. "I'm just trying to understand the extent of your relationship with them, so we can work on not having it being more than it should be. Because, as things are now, this bond is harmful for you. We need to…scale it down." She then had smiled a bit. "Even if we have to admit that you have a real talent for denying the obvious."

He had hated not being able to talk back to her last sentence, but the fact was that it couldn't have been truer, even if she had been half joking while speaking it. He had always been incredibly good at being blind to the things he couldn't or didn't want to accept and see. It had made his life easier, on one hand, but on the other it had led him where he stood now. Perhaps, if he had learnt his lesson after his first banishment, he wouldn't have reached such depths. The thought had haunted him in the following days, also because his task for the week was to try not to deny the obvious, at least in the little things. And it had turned out to be anything but easy.

"Stupid human rain," he grumbled under his breath, crossing his arms on his chest. "Will you ever stop falling on Zim's head?"

"Zim?" A familiar voice called from behind his back, causing him to start and whip his head around. Ms Xander smiled at him, from where she was standing a couple of steps behind him, holding a closed umbrella. "Hi. How are you doing? How was your day?"

The Irken's expression lit up slightly at the sight of the woman. He refused to admit it, but, even though she bugged him most of the time, he had grown to respect her. Not for her height as it was imposed by his society and PAK instincts, or out of fear as it was for Gaz. Or out of some weird feeling of likeness and for the shared battles as it was for Dib. He recognised her competence and the fact that she was a valuable support for him in his current situation. Besides, while some of their talks left him unsettled or upset, they had usually made his day, when he had been in his darkest moods. Gratitude wasn't something Irkens often experienced, but there were times when even the proudest of them had to recognise the undeniable value of a very useful tool.

"Acelynn-doc!" He exclaimed, unable to hide a hint of surprise. He hadn't met to see her, of all people. Then he frowned as he went back glaring at the sky. "Meh, it's raining. Zim _hates_ the rain. It burns." His eyes widened a bit at the admission that had slipped past his lips and he hurried to add: "I'm allergic to the stupid pollutants in it. It's because of my…skin condition." He pointed his face, while studying her expression for any eventual hint of suspicion. He found none.

"I see," the woman nodded, showing instead a bit of worry. "You should always carry an umbrella with you, if you don't want to get hurt." She stepped forward and opened hers. "I can lend you mine. Or even better! Let me drive you home. It will be quicker and we'll be sure that you don't get wet. What do you say?"

The Invader tilted his head at the offer, but he nodded. Perhaps taking Ms Xander to his base wasn't the most cautious move, but she seemed to have already made up her mind and, besides, he could exploit the situation to talk to her, since he had been forced to skip their first weekly meeting.

"Zim has one, but I never take it with me," he grumbled as they headed for the woman's car. He noticed that she was getting slightly wet on one side to make sure that he was fully under the umbrella. It was the same kind of care that she showed during their talks and it still made him uncomfortable, even after all that time.

"Maybe you should attach it to yourself, somehow," the counsellor joked with a small grin, unlocking the car from the passenger side to let him in first, before walking around the vehicle. "This way you wouldn't forget it."

Zim's expression turned calculating, dismissing the humorous hint in her voice. It wasn't a bad idea. He could have added yet another device to his PAK, some sort of mechanical umbrella or even a more integral protective device. It would have spared him the trouble of bathing in paste every day, or at least offered him a solution when he forgot to do it. He would have asked the Computer to work on it with him that night. He was already an unofficial exile, so no one would have cared if he had tampered with his PAK a bit more. No law he could break could have made his destiny worse than it already was.

On the other side of the road, Dib was staring with wide eyes as his alien nemesis got in the car with the Skool counsellor. He had left the building with Gaz, but he had stayed behind to watch Zim glaring daggers at the rain. The resentful expression on the Invader's face had been a lot of fun and he had wanted to see if his nemesis would have just stood there, waiting for the small storm to pass, or if he would have dared to do something riskier to escape it.

After over fifteen minutes, it had become clear that the Irken had reluctantly chosen the first option. The teen had been pondering whether or not walking back to the Skool entrance and offering him to share his umbrella when the woman had showed up. He could have sworn that he had seen his rival's eyes lighting up when he had recognised her, but it couldn't have been. He had to have imagined it. There was no reason why Zim should have been _glad_ to see any human. And yet, the idea had lingered in the back of his mind and left an unpleasant feeling in his guts, one that he hadn't been able to ignore completely, no matter how hard he had tried. There was something intrinsically _wrong_ in the concept, for reasons he hadn't cared to explore.

Instead, he had watched them talking easily, wondering what exactly was going on, but his confusion had turned into worry when the woman had pulled out her umbrella and had started to walk the alien to her car. She was taking him home and he was letting her. Zim never allowed anyone near his base, unless it was unavoidable or unless he had something nasty planned for them. In that case it had to be the second option, which meant that the counsellor was in danger. He had to do something before it was too late.

Without wasting more time, he closed his umbrella to be able to run and hurried after the car, not caring about the rain that was already starting to slowly soak his clothes.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

"Just a moment!" Zim exclaimed, running ahead along the driveway of his base, trying to ignore the burning of the drops of rain that hit his skin. He reached the door and unlocked it, poking his head inside before calling out loudly: "GIR! Be a good _normal_ Earthen _dog_. It's an order! We have guest and I need you to behave."

Since the car trip had lasted just a few minutes, he had decided to invite the woman inside to have a chance to talk to her a bit longer. She had accepted easily enough and the base was in order, so there shouldn't have been problems. The only unpredictable variable was his SIR Unit, but the Invader felt a bit reassured when he saw his sidekick standing on attention in Duty Mode with a brief "Yes, master!", before slipping his disguise on.

The Irken nodded in satisfaction and then opened the door completely, stepping inside and moving aside to let Ms Xander in. He watched as she looked around the place, noticing a hint of puzzlement in her expression, but aside from raising an eyebrow a few times she didn't have any other reaction and simply went to sit on the couch as she was gestured to do. He decided that it was safe to leave her alone for a moment and went to the kitchen to fetch the extra waffles he hadn't taken to Skool for lunch, GIR hot on his heels for the whole time.

"You have a very… _interesting_ house, Zim," the counsellor commented once he had joined her. She had to admit that there were a few details of the place that creeped her out, like the giant painting on the wall of living room and the garden, the lawn gnomes especially. If she had had any doubt left on the fact that her patient's family was an eccentric one, which she hadn't, the sight of the house would have chased them away.

Her attention then move to the disguised robot. The pet was a bit odd himself and didn't look very smart, but she had to admit that he was cute, in his own _special_ way. "And this must be GIR, isn't it?" She extended a hand towards him, showing him her palm. "Hey, little buddy. Come here. I've hear a lot about you."

"Thank you, Acelynn-doc. I think," Zim answered, before nodding to his sidekick, who had turned towards him as to ask the permission to approach their guest. He carried the waffles to the couch and sat down in turn, setting the plate between them. "Yeah, that's GIR." He watched as the robot fell face down on the floor after the woman had scratched the top his head. "He is a real moron."

"I think he's really sweet, instead," Ms Xander talked back with a small chuckle, moving her fingers to the fake dog's belly as GIR turned to lie on his back. He was clearly enjoying the petting. No one ever stopped to cuddle him, especially not his master, and he absolutely enjoyed it. "So, where are your parents?"

The Irken looked down the pile of waffles. "They are away for…for the _thing_. You know, work," he answered after a moment. It was much better to pretend that his parent units were out, rather than risking having the human interacting with his faulty robots. "I told you that they aren't around much. But Zim doesn't mind. I like it better this way."

She nodded, even if she looked pensive for a moment. Zim had always struck her as very independent, even for his age, but she still didn't like how isolated he was, even in his own home. "I understand. I liked it better too when my parents weren't home, when I was your age." She smiled at him. "What about your lab? I'd be curious to see it. For what you told me, you spend a lot of time there. Is it underground?"

The Invader's head shot up again and his eyes widened in panic for a moment. Showing her his lab? It would have been like taking off his contact lenses and wig. "Uh, the lab, yes. It's…It's underground, but we can't go there. No. Not now," he stumbled on his words, his mind looking frantically for a good excuse that could pass the test of her expectant blue eyes. Damned instructor-like look. "It's a real mess and…and…I have a big, big… _big_ experiment going on and it needs to be left alone or it will be compromised!" That sounded good. He eyed her hopefully. "Yes, yes! I spent a looot of time working on it and it would be a _disaster_ if it was ruined."

Ms Xander blinked slightly at his sudden agitation and couldn't help wondering what the teen could be really doing in the lab that he didn't want her to see, but she decided not to investigate for the moment. She still couldn't help wondering a bit, because Zim did nothing but talking about destruction and secret missions, but he had never harmed anyone, as far as she knew. She had asked around, to be sure, and, not having been reported any relevant episode. She was also aware that he and Dib had had quite some fights on Skool ground, but none of them had ever ended up at the hospital for what she had been told. So, she had chosen to give him the benefit of doubt, at least until any worrisome evidence had come up.

"Maybe another time, then," she conceded with a small wave of her hand as she picked up a piece of waffle. The flavour was a bit weird, but they weren't bad. "So, you really like science, don't you?" She resumed once she was done chewing. "And building things, right?"

The alien bit back a huge relieved sigh when she let her request go and quickly nodded, eager to get the conversation away from the subject of his lab. "Yes. Zim is very good with technology," he confirmed proudly, lifting his chin slightly. That was something that not even his status as Defective could deny. The fact that most of his machines ended up malfunctioning because of external interferences didn't count. He was skilled when it came to project and build them, he had always been. The same couldn't have been said about his chemical experiments because he mostly ended up creating monsters, but that was a whole other story.

The woman nodded. "I asked because I was thinking about what you said before, about the rain and your skin condition," she went on, looking pleased with his answer. She hadn't taken her patient home with the aim of offering counselling, but since Zim himself seemed so eager to spend some time with her, she had decided to use the opportunity. "We've been talking about trying to focus on goals that are…more constructive, remember? Well, you could try to build something that can fight those pollutants you're allergic to. This way the rain won't be such a problem for you anymore and you'll also be doing something good for the world. I know that it's a big task and I don't expect you to find a solution in a matter of months, but you could see it as a…science project. Something fun and interesting you can do in your free time."

The Irken stared at her for a few moments, his mind elaborating the suggestion. That was another brilliant plan that he should have thought of _years_ before, but that had never really touched his mind. He had been too focused on trying to destroy the Earth to even consider fixing the planet's faults. Not that he cared about making it a better place for humans, but that would benefit him before anyone else. Especially since he was stuck there until further notice. He knew that talking to that woman would have turned out to be a good idea. With his advance technology, he wouldn't have taken years as she had implied, and not even months. Perhaps, a few weeks, if he took his time.

A small smug smirk opened on his face. "Acelynn-doc, you should give Zim these…science projects more often."

 **╔ IZ ╗**

By the time he had reached his rival's base, Dib was completely soaked. Both his hair and clothes were dripping water and he couldn't clear his glasses from the drops of rain because he didn't have anything that was dry enough to do the job. He stopped in front of the gate that led inside the garden, eyes lingering on the gnomes. The creepy devices had instantly turned towards him as he had entered their field of view, threateningly staring at him with their white eyes.

He studied them dubiously. The upgraded security system was still mostly in place, he had checked, so he knew that they would try to capture him as soon as he would have crossed the perimeter. He moved his gaze on the house. It was quiet, but the woman's car was parked in front of it, so she had to be inside. The silence in that case was as reassuring as the sound of horrible screams would have been. He gulped slightly. He had to reach one of the windows, to at least have an idea of what was going on. Then, if it had been the case, he would have tried and broken in.

Sucking in a breath he launched himself past the small gate, rolling on the ground to avoid the metal arms that shot out to grab him. A laser was shot in his direction, missing its target, but functioning very well as a warning that the teen, however, forced himself to ignore as he kept trying to approach the building.

In the same moment when he had taken the first step inside the garden, an alarm had started to blare inside the house, making both Zim and Ms Xander start. The Invader had jumped on his feet in one instant, already heading for the kitchen.

"It's the…uh, the _PHONE_!" He yelled, both to be heard above the loud sound and because he was in a hurry to find an excuse, before disappearing in the next room. "Computer, terminate the alarm, immediately!" He barked then, in Irken, just in the unlikely case that the woman could hear him talking. "We have a _human_ in our base!"

"But, master, the Dib is trying to break in. I needed to warn you," the machine pointed out, but it carried out the order, the sound ceasing as abruptly as it had started. "Should I terminate the intruder too?"

Zim hesitated for a moment. He was aware that the only way to stop his nemesis from trying to break in was either to kill him, which hadn't been an option in a long time, or to knock him out. However, he couldn't risk leaving him unconscious on the pavement for Ms Xander to see when she would have taken her leave and he didn't want to drag the teen in the underground part of his base and abandon him there mostly unsupervised either. It was never a good idea to allow the human close to his instrumentation. He clenched his fists for a moment, quickly making his decision.

"We can't terminate him with a witness here," he stated firmly, frowning slightly. "Keep him busy for a few more minutes and then let him in. Zim will handle him. And make me something that fits the definition of human "coffee"! This instant!"

"As you wish, sir!"

A couple of minutes later, the Computer dropped a steaming mug of coffee and an Irken soda in his master's waiting hands and the Invader marched back into the living room, managing to make it half way to the couch before the door suddenly burst open, just as he knew it would have.

Dib stood in the doorway, soaked in rain, clothes stained with the mud from the garden and wearing a very determined expression on his face. When the metal arms had suddenly stopped attacking him, he had suspected that it could be a trap, but he had still chosen to take his chances and had rushed to the entrance. No lethal weapon had been fired at him and he hadn't fallen into any hole that had suddenly open under his feet, so he had decided that he was as safe as he could be around his nemesis.

"Zim, whatever you're planning to do, I'll stop…" He started to yell, but the words died in his throat as he took in the scene in front of him. The woman wasn't in any sort of danger as he had expected. She was comfortably sat on the alien's couch, stopped mid gesture while she had been reaching out to take the mug that Zim was offering, her other hand set on the top of a disguised GIR's head. She had clearly been _petting_ him.

The teen gaped, not knowing what to think. What the hell was going on there? Where were the instruments for torture and experimentation? There wasn't even a computer screen in sight and his rival was still playing the part of the "normal" human boy, with his wig and contact lenses on.

"Uh…" He let out, suddenly feeling incredibly stupid and definitely out of place, in his wet, dirty state. "S-Sorry to interrupt. I thought that…that Zim was…up to something."

The Irken offered him a smirk so smug that Dib wished he could have just walked across the room and punched him. However, since he didn't want to embarrass himself even further, he just took a step inside and closed the door behind him. The woman seemed to have recovered from her surprise a bit, but she kept staring at him for a few moments, before forcing a smile.

"Hello, Dib. You _are_ Dib Membrane, aren't you? The _nemesis_ ," she greeted, her grin relaxing and becoming sincerer at the boy's puzzlement. She had to admit that she had been curious to meet her patient's arch rival. She had read his file and the poor kid had to have just as many problems as Zim, considering what was written in those records. He had even been sent to the Crazy House for Boys once. She could see why the two of them were so close despite their difficult, often conflictual relationship. They had a lot in common, starting from their being both outcasts and perceived as different, even if not for the same reasons. "Zim has told me a lot about you."

It was the scythe-haired boy's turn to stare in confusion, his mind unable to put the pieces together. He could see the Invader waving his hands frantically, as to try to halt the conversation, but he didn't acknowledge him, too focused on the woman to care. He couldn't make sense of her being in his rival's house, invited and unharmed, and of her knowing about the relationship he and the alien shared. Zim had talked with her about him. What was that supposed to mean? Was she a disguised alien too? It was the most plausible, even if quite unrealistic, explanation his mind could come up with.

"Yes, it's…it's me," he confirmed, sounding terribly unsure. "You're the…the Hi Skool counsellor. You came to our class that day…when Louis was found dead."

Ms Xander couldn't help a small chuckle at the taller teen's expression. The poor kid was unable to make sense of the facts. Was it so absurd to think that her patient had accepted to come and do some therapy with a psychologist? She was ready to admit that Zim didn't look like the kind of person who would believe in such a thing, but the situation they were in was pretty revealing. "Yes, Dib, that was me. My name is Acelynn Xander."

Her answer didn't bring any clarity to Dib who kept on staring, trying to figure out the answer to his questions without having to pose them. However, he was clearly failing so, after a few more moments, he resigned himself to ask, even if, from the woman's expression, he could tell that he was missing something painfully _obvious_. "I…I don't understand. What are you doing here? With _him_?"

"Don't tell him!" Zim stepped in, moving forwards too, as if he had been attempting to physically go to stand between the woman and his nemesis, but he froze as the counsellor gave him the instructor-like look. "We had a deal! You said that you wouldn't tell if Zim didn't want you to!"

"We _have_ a deal, yes. But, at this point, he'll figure it out anyway as soon as he recovers from the surprise. Even if I don't tell him," the woman calmly pointed out. "So, it's better if I put us all out of this misery." She turned back towards Dib. "I'm Zim's therapist."

The Irken let out a horrified screech at those words, even if deep down he had to agree with her explanation. But it didn't mean that he liked it. He should have asked the Computer to knock the nosy human out and dealt with him later. Instead, he had ended up revealing one of his most shameful secrets to his nemesis. How much would it take to the other to find out that his race had abandoned him now? He really needed to start thinking before acting.

Dib, on his part, kept gaping for the most, the shocked expression renewed on his face and now addressed at the Invader. "You…You…" He tried to say, but he had to stop himself since his voice wasn't working properly.

He took in a deep breath. That explained where his rival went during the lunch breaks and the lessons twice a week. It could also explain part of his weird behaviours and some of his choices, even if there was obviously more to them. And yet, even now that he had heard it from the counsellor herself, it still sounded too absurd to be true. "You're in therapy?"

Zim opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out of his lips and instead he contorted himself on his feet for a few moments, almost ending up on the floor. Then he seemed to finally have got some control on himself back and pointed a finger towards Dib. "You _LIE_! Filthy, _filthy_ lies!" He screamed hysterically, shaking his head.

Ms Xander brought her hands to her ears, managing to spare herself the most high-pitched part of her patient's yelling and then rubbed her temple slowly. "Zim, we talked about this in the last session," she scolded him, gently. "What's your task for the week?"

The alien let his arm drop. "Trying not to deny the obvious," he grumbled in a much quieter tone. His expression turned slightly dejected. So much for managing to fulfil his tasks. "Zim knows, Acelynn-doc. But I can't help it."

She sighed. "I know. I never said that it would have been easy," she offered in a soothing tone. "So, why don't you try again?" She gestured towards the scythe-haired boy. "Answer his question."

The reluctance in the Irken's eyes and stance was so thick that it was almost palpable, but he nodded anyway and spoke, mostly muttering under his breath and without looking at his nemesis: "Yes, Dib-pig. Zim is in therapy, you filthy Earth scum."

" _Very_ good, Zim," the counsellor praised, but then she bit back the umpteenth exasperated sigh. "Even if we really need to have a talk about the name calling."

" _NEVER_!" The Invader opposed firmly, clenching his fists at his side. "I am in control of the talks and I refuse to change the way I address the meat worms that inhabits this ball of dirty! Because I'm still in control, am I not?"

This time the woman was forced to lift her hands in surrender. "Yes, Zim, of course. That will never change. It's one of the basic terms of our arrangement."

"Good." Zim nodded in satisfaction, even if deep down he was still burning with humiliation. He needed to be rid of his rival before the other could digest the information he had received and use it against him or to get more details about his situation. "Now, the Dib will leave."

He stepped forward and grabbed the still dazed teen by the coat, starting to pull him towards the door. The wet cloth burnt him slightly through the thick material of his glove, but he ignored the uncomfortable feeling. "And no objections, Acelynn-doc!" He added, knowing that the woman would have tried to object without needing to turn to look at her. "You said that I have to make my own choices, so I now choose to throw the worm child out of my house!"

Ms Xander closed the mouth she had opened to protest about the way in which her patient had been treating the other boy. It was useless. Zim had already made up his mind. So, instead, she downed the coffee she had almost forgotten, finding out that it tasted as weird as the waffles had, grabbed her bag and joined the two on the doorstep, after having given one last gentle pat to GIR's head.

"I should go too. I have work to do at home," she stated with a small smile, opening her umbrella. "I'll see you Friday, Zim." She nodded to him, cutting off whatever complaint had been about to leave the Irken's mouth. "Dib." And with that, she started to walk towards the car.

The Invader let out a frustrated noise and pushed the teen out of the door, slamming it shut as soon as the latter had landed on the driveway. He then let his head bang against the reinforced surface, realising what he had just done. He had left his nemesis alone with his therapist. So much for thinking before acting.

"Master?" GIR called from where he was standing next to him, tagging at the hem of his uniform. He had taken off the head of his disguise and his teal eyes were fixed on the alien. "Will the nice lady come back again? I really, _really_ liiiiked her!"

"I don't think so, GIR," he grumbled, grabbing the robot by the hand. "But I can take you to see her somewhere else. _Maybe._ If you behave. Now, let's go to the lab. We have work to do."

"Yay! Tacos!" The SIR Unit chirped, excited. "Are we trying to wreck the planet again? Or to get back at Mary for having such a big head?"

"No, GIR. Even if we'll do that too. Later." Zim raised his free fist to his face. "We are going to defeat the Earth rain of _doom_! Computer, take us down!"

" _Dooooooom_!" GIR yelled as the floor opened under their feet, sending them falling down in the dark, underground depths of the building.

* * *

Hi guys!

This chapter comes a bit later than I have meant for it, both because I've been busy with personal/college stuff and also because I confess that I took some time to write another IZ one-shot instead of working on it ^^" (btw, if you wanna check it out, you can find it on my profile. This website doesn't let me link stuff).

I'll be brief with my commentary, mostly because I don't have much time to spare today, but I wanted to update anyway! Be glad that I won't bug you much xD

This chapter is still on the lighter side, as the previous one, and my main aim for it was to make Dib and Acelynn meet (even if their actual talk comes with the next one). Also, I wanted to have Zim and Ms Xander interact a bit outside the office, just to show the real extent of their relationship. Zim is still struggling a lot after the last session I staged between them and he more or less sees her as the key to the answers he needs...But unfortunately she isn't as forthcoming as he would like her to be (yeah, even after over two months he still hasn't really grasped how therapy works!).

I'll be eager to hear what you think of all this! ^^

So, a brief but heartfelt thank you to all my readers. I know that this isn't and will never be the most popular or the best IZ fanfic ever (it's kinda far from being it), but for that reason the interest you show in my work and the time you take to read mean to me even more. Thanks, guys!  
And of course, I want my reviewers to know that I love them for sparing the time to leave me a comment every time. You're the best!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	18. Chapter 18

"Dib, are you alright?" Ms Xander's voice called from outside the garden, the slightest hint of worry colouring her tone.

Dib let out a small groan as he got back on his feet from where he had fallen on his ass, after Zim had shoved him out. "I'm fine. I'm used to worse," he answered, straightening his glasses. Damned alien. Why did he always have to be so hysterical and random? "This is really nothing compared to my usual…uh, fights with Zim."

He looked towards her and taking in her image suddenly reminded him of the revelation he had just received. He blinked, starting to feel a little dazed once again. The idea of his rival attending sessions with a psychologist was unbelievable enough in itself, but seeing how she had handled the Invader had been too much for his brain. He had felt like his mind had short-circuited in the very moment when the Irken had listened to the woman and admitted that he was indeed in therapy.

He reached out to rub the side of his skull, closing his eyes. His head hurt so much that, for a moment, he couldn't help wondering if it all hadn't been an hallucination caused by one of the blows he had taken while fighting off the metallic limbs of his nemesis's security system. However, when he lifted his eyelids again, he found that the woman was still standing in front of him, looking very real and very worried. So, he decided, as absurd as it might have seemed, it had to have happened.

"Get in, I'll take you home," she offered, gesturing the car. The boy looked a bit lost and his head had to hurt, judging by the way in which he was massaging his temple. The fact that the shock had hit him so hard surprised her once again, pushing her to wonder how much she was truly missing. Was she really that unable to understand the contorted bond that tied the two teens together?

"Thanks, Ms Xander," Dib accepted, joining her on the pavement and heading for the passenger door. He stopped before opening it, though, looking suddenly embarrassed once again as he remembered the state of his clothes. "Uh, I'm all wet. And muddy."

She waved a dismissive hand. "Don't worry about it. And Acelynn will do, Dib," she chuckled, getting in the car and waiting for him to do the same. "I have a niece who _loves_ rolling around in the dirt. I'm an expert in cleaning car seats by now." She smiled at him, before turning a bit more serious. "Besides, there's something I want to talk about with you."

Dib didn't need to be told twice and he stepped inside the vehicle, making himself comfortable against the seatback. Maybe accepting that lift wasn't a good idea, especially considering the woman's last statement, but he was starting to feel cold and it was still raining badly. His house wasn't too far from the Irken's base, but he still would have rather not having to walk under the storm, if he had another alternative. Besides, Ms Xander couldn't have forced him to speak to her, if he hadn't wanted to.

"You want to talk to me what, exactly?" He asked, not without a hint of suspicion, his shoulders tensing. "Listen, Acelynn, no offence, but if you're trying to have me coming to see you too, I'm not interested. Zim mentioned me and I guess you've access to all the students' files, so you should know that I…don't agree well with psychotherapy or anything of the sort."

"It's _nothing_ of the sort, Dib," she reassured him, with a small sigh. "Even if I'm persuaded that a bit of counselling could help you. I can assure you that I have no intention of sending you to a nuthouse for the rest of your life or to stuff you with pills. I mainly have my patients talking to me. That's all. As I do with Zim. Just think about it. My door is always open, if you change your mind."

The teen studied her for a long moment as she set down her bag and umbrella before turning the engine on. "Do you believe in aliens? Or in any other paranormal stuff?" He asked then, point-blank. She probably already knew everything about him, or, more specifically, everything that people thought about him. So, that considered, such a sudden question surely wouldn't have made her think that he was crazy. Not more than she most likely already believed him to be.

The woman turned to glance at him. "Personally? Not really. Ghosts, monsters, other worlds…Not my thing. I'm not even religious, so don't believe in God or Heaven and Hell either. But this doesn't necessarily mean that I'm right. As for aliens…The universe is big. Potentially boundless. For how I see it, it would be too…pretentious for humans to believe that their planet is the only one capable of supporting life and that we're the only intelligent race in the universe. So, yes. I believe that there's someone else, out there. But no, I don't think that there are currently extra-terrestrial beings on Earth. Does this answer your question?"

"It does," he answered, trying to hide the hint of disappointment he felt. She seemed more open-minded than most people he had met, but she wouldn't have believed him if he had told her that Zim wasn't human either. Most likely she already knew about that specific claim of his, since it was in his file, and she had avoided to mention it just not to pour salt on the wound. He couldn't help wondering what the Irken had been telling her during their sessions without revealing her the truth. Only one thing was certain. Whatever tale the Invader had woven for her, it had to be a good one, since she clearly thought that his nemesis was just a very problematic teenager.

"What did you want to talk about, Acelynn?" He asked, deciding that it was better to change the subject. Trying to press it further would have just brought him troubles. It made no sense looking for an opening where there were none. It was one of the lessons he had learnt the hard way during the last few years.

Ms Xander shot him another calculating glance. She knew that hers wasn't the answer the boy would have wanted to hear, but she had chosen to be honest, instead of playing along and pretending to believe him. From what she had read, the last time someone had tried to do that, it hadn't ended well. Moreover, hopefully, her sincerity would have also proven to Dib that she wasn't there to label or section him, but that her offer and reassurance were sincere.

"I want to talk about Zim, actually," she started, turning her eyes back towards the road. "I can't tell you much about what he shares with me, because, as you know, my profession has strict rules." She offered him a meaningful look, as to say that he shouldn't have tried to fish for more information than the ones she would have volunteered. "However, there are some things about him that I really can't understand and it's bothering me. I'm a bit worried, to be honest. He has very strong tendencies, both destructive and self-destructive, as I'm sure you know. I want to help him dealing with them and whatever issue is causing them, but I can't see through these…fantasy stories he tells me. No matter how hard I try."

Dib frowned. He had half-expected her to bring Zim up, since she wasn't there to talk about him, but a request for help was the last thing he would have thought of hearing. "Fantasy stories?" He repeated, slightly puzzled. What had the Invader been telling her? "And well, Zim is like that, for what concerns the destructive parts. It's his… _unique_ personality." There was a hint of sarcasm in the way he spoke the last two words. Then he turned serious again. "As for him being self-destructive, I never noticed that. His ego is too _big_ to allow him even to just think about hurting himself, in any way." He shrugged. "If it happened, it was always by accident, or someone else's fault."

Ms Xander chuckled again, but this time the look in her eyes was knowing and not amused. "You know, Dib, you'd be surprise to learn how many problems and insecurities a self-centred personality can hide," she commented with a slightly sad smile. "It's called "overcompensating". You create a fake image of confidence, often exaggerated, to cover up your weaknesses. You create a strong façade that can hide how, in truth, you're lacking what you need to be a stable person. But I do agree on the fact that Zim has a very… _peculiar_ temperament."

She shook her head, half amused and half thoughtful. The teen next to her was showing the same mix of hostility and of that weird something else that her patient had described while talking about his rival. Perhaps Zim had really been right when he had stated that Dib felt the same about him, whatever that "same" was.

"Anyway, about those stories I mentioned," she resumed. "I don't know if you have any idea of what he might be referring to, but if you do, then I'll ask you to help me out. Zim might call you his "nemesis", and to an extent I've come to believe that you're exactly that, but I'm also sure that there's much more than hate and rivalry in the meaning of the term. At least in the way he uses it. Honestly, I've some troubles to figure that out too…And this probably makes me sound like a very lame therapist." She laughed lightly. "But I'm sure of one thing. You're the closest bond he has. Perhaps the closest he's ever had in his whole existence. He's very… _possessive_ of you, for lack of a better word. For this reason I believe that, if there's someone who can get past his defences, that's you, Dib. I'm not saying that you have to find out and tell me. Just…talk to him. It would help."

Dib eyed her weirdly when she seemed to imply that the alien's arrogance was the way in which Zim overcompensated for some sort of lack of affection or self-esteem. It might have been a good explanation if his nemesis had been human, but it wasn't the case. If she had really known the Invader, _what_ he was, she would have never formulated such hypotheses. He refrained from pointing it out, though, knowing that it wouldn't have got him anywhere. The woman seemed pretty persuaded of her analyses, perhaps too much to be ready to change her beliefs. Besides, she had changed the subject almost immediately, clearly eager to get to the core of her request.

So, instead of trying to talk back, he focused on listening to what she was telling him. He had hoped to be offered more details about the "stories" Zim had been telling, but instead he got something completely different. A hint of uneasiness spread in his chest when she mentioned that the alien was "possessive" of him, his mind briefly touching a certain, awkward episode, but he forced himself not to linger on the memory. Blushing in front of a psychologist while said person was talking about your rival wasn't the smartest thing to do. It was easy to imagine what she might have concluded and the last thing he needed was for her to go and ask Zim about it. The Irken would have immediately assumed that he had told her something about their…space accident and he didn't really want to deal with a revenge he hadn't earned.

Averting his attention from that peculiar train of thoughts turned out to be easier than he had expected when the counsellor stated that he was the closest person Zim had in his life. Weirdly enough, Dib didn't have a hard time believing it, because the Invader hardly interacted with anyone else, aside from GIR and his Computer. However, the only reason behind that choice was that Zim didn't require anyone. It was how the alien's people worked and were trained, if not directly _engineered,_ to be. And, while the Irken seemed to need _him_ , in some weird, obsessive way, the teen had no doubt that, in time, his nemesis would have learnt to cope without their battles once again, as he had used to do before they met.

As for himself, Dib wasn't sure that he would have really been able to go back to his pre-Zim life. He had already tried it once and it hadn't worked out well. Even if GIR hadn't come to him, begging him to go back chasing his master, he would have crawled back to the alien by himself, eventually. Giving up on his main project, on his _mission_ , had left him feeling deeply unsatisfied, as if he had been lacking something _vital_ , something that made going through his days truly worth the trouble. Working side by side with his father had been a nice change for a while, but on the long-term it still hadn't been enough. He would have never admitted it, but he had missed his and Zim's skirmish and constant interactions as much as his nemesis had. No matter how unhealthy they were. He would have probably taken them over almost anything else, especially considering how _fundamental_ , for the lack of a better word, the Irken had become for him. Always hated, but almost necessary.

Dib distractedly scratched the back of his head. The truth was that the description that Ms Xander had made of Zim's bond to him could have easily fitted the teen's own, unwanted but inevitable attachment to the Invader. The huge difference was that he was human and, even if he was a loner, he still needed others to function properly. And the problem was that his "others", at the moment, were his absent father, his badass but detached sister and the being who was trying to destroy his planet. Not the brightest picture.

"I don't know. I mean, he doesn't really talk to me. You saw that. He didn't even want me to know that he was seeing you," he pointed out after a moment of silence, discarding his previous thoughts. They had almost reached his house. "I don't see why he should tell me anything. We hate each other. I'm his nemesis before anything else. He'd never share with me something he considers a weakness. But I'll try, if I really must." He rested his chin on the palm of his hand. "And I don't think that you're a bad psychologist for not understanding half of what he says or does. I don't understand him either, most of the times. This…"bond", as you called it, is one of the things I haven't figured out yet. And I…I think I feel the same way he does, which makes it all even more worrisome. Especially because _he_ has it all figured out."

"Thank you, Dib. That's all I ask from you. Even if you get nothing, it will let him know that you care," the woman said with another smile as she parked the car. "And I wouldn't worry that much, if I were you. Emotions are the most confusing when you experience them in first person, simply because you often lack the right detachment to analyse them. Especially when they are this strong and complex." Her grin turned almost sly. "And I wouldn't say that Zim has it all figured out. He might understand a deeper shade of whatever this is, but he has troubles with it too. I can tell."

Dib didn't scoff just out of politeness. Her words hadn't really reassured him and hearing her saying that he _cared_ for Zim had made him want to laugh and cringe at the same time. Moreover, his policy was that, when the Irken was concerned, you always had to worry. However, once again, he chose not to comment. They had very different opinions on the matter and that wouldn't have changed any time soon. He was too tired to have a serious long discussion and, besides, he was still slightly concerned about giving Ms Xander too many openings to analyse his own mind.

"If you say so," he simply said, even if his scepticism was well audible in his voice. "Uh, can you make me an example of these stories he tells you? Like, what are they about? Just to have an idea of what I'm supposed to look for."

The woman hesitated for a moment, then she nodded. "I guess I can mention something to you," she agreed, killing the engine and bringing a finger to her chin. She was aware that she was still bound to respect the client confidentiality, with Zim more than ever, considering how paranoid that particular patient of hers was, but giving out some vague information wouldn't have hurt anyone. On the contrary, it might have helped her getting somewhere with the teen.

"You see, he often talks about this "mission" he's been sent "here" to fulfil. Don't ask me more, because I have no idea of what the "mission" is or what "here" exactly mean. To destroy something is my best guess, since he usually says that he must bring destruction too when he speaks of his tasks," she started, sighing deeply. "And the other big subject I'm having a lot of troubles with is this…"my Tallest" thing. Apparently, he's been given his "mission" by these two people who are his…leaders? For lack of a better word. All I know is that he's _obsessed_ with them, in a very unhealthy way. But I have no real idea of whom they could be."

She shook his head, remembering the weird, contrasting attitude that Zim had showed towards those two mysterious figures. Under the evident sense of betrayal and anger that their names evoked in him, he still seemed unable not to feel a deeply rooted devotion and loyalty for them, almost as if he had been conditioned to associate those feelings to them.

"They're people he grew up with, but that's all I have been able to gather," she resumed, the hint of a frown creasing her feature. "I think that he might have grown up inside some sort of…gang or organisation. Perhaps a group with some weird, distorted religious values. Like a cult. But he hasn't given me many clues. And I can't tell if he is refusing to explain it or if he simply can't do it." Another sigh escaped his lips. "Oh, and these guys, they're _tall_. As you might have guessed. That's another thing he seems to be obsessed with. _Height_. Unless it stands for something else I can't figure out."

The teen stared at her, trying not to gape too openly at her words, even if the task became harder and harder as she went on speaking. He couldn't believe his ears. Zim had told her that he had been sent on Earth by his _alien_ leaders to _destroy_ it, without actually telling her. It was no surprise that she couldn't make sense of the Irken's words. The key fact that would have allowed a real understanding was missing. It was so absurd that he wanted to laugh. Aloud and _hysterically_. However, he bit his tongue and swallowed the sound that had filled his throat. He would have just looked like a lunatic if he had burst out into laughter.

"I…I'll see what I can do," he said quickly, perhaps _too_ quickly. He then hurried to open the car door. "I have to go now. Uh, thanks for the lift." The time to offer a small, forced smile and he was out of the vehicle. "Have a nice day, Acelynn."

Ms Xander narrowed her eyes at the sudden change of demeanour, she but didn't speak a word. The boy knew something, if not everything, about what she was missing, but he clearly wasn't going to share. Or even to just tell her that he knew. She wondered what the reason behind the refusal could be, but she almost immediately gave up on the thought. The teen was just as confusing to read as Zim was.

"You too, Dib," she simply wished back, before restarting her car and driving away. She almost hoped that he would have accepted her invitation to come and have a few sessions of counselling. It could have been the chance she needed to be able to help them both.

Dib remained standing in his driveway, watching the vehicle rushing away until it disappeared from his sight, ignoring the water that was still falling from the sky. There were drops of rain quickly making their way along the skin of his face and the lenses of his glasses, but he was almost unaware of them, just as he had temporarily forgotten about the cold he was supposed to be feeling. All he had thought he would have obtained that day had been to see his rival struggling with the storm and having the opportunity to make fun of him. Instead he had accidentally uncovered one of the secrets the Invader had been keeping from him. And he didn't really know what he should do with the knowledge he had acquired. Or how to feel about it. He groaned softly. Maybe getting inside and drying off could be a good start.

Not without a hint of reluctance, because a part of him wanted to walk back to Zim's base, knock on the door and demand the explanations he had been waiting for since the other's bad moods had started, he turned on his heels and headed inside the house. He would have done his homework and slept on it, as he had often done in the last two months, after every time his rival had acted in a way he hadn't been able to comprehend. This time, however, he wasn't hoping for a sudden revelation. He would have been content with forgetting, even if just for a while, about the Irken-sized headache he had once again developed thanks to a certain alien green pest.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

"Uhmmmmmm…"

GIR was staring hard at a small bottle he had just found inside the only cupboard of his master's kitchen. He had no idea of what it was or of what was inside. It had to be something he and the Irken had bought while throwing random items in the cart of some supermarket the last time they had been out shopping for supplies.

Around him the kitchen was covered with flour, sugar, broken eggs and butter, spread all over the floor and some even on the walls. The robot had been experimenting with his baking again and, since his master, before locking himself in his lab, had made sure to remove the colourful chemicals he usually added to his creations to make them prettier, he had been left to improvise. Which of course meant that he had rummage around the main floor of the house, looking for everything he might have used for his cooking experiments.

He hadn't found much, aside from some soap, but the small bottle, whatever it was, seemed promising. The powder it contained was fluffy and, according to his sensors, it smelt pleasantly. That meant that it couldn't be harmful. Besides, the picture on it looked like something that could be eaten, so it should be a safe choice. For _humans,_ at least. The main problem was that his master was anything but, and GIR was very aware of how unhappy some Earthen foods made the Irken's squeedly spooch.

The SIR Unit's enthusiasm disappeared abruptly at the thought, as he stared, almost dejectedly, at the bottle. Perhaps he shouldn't put it in the sweets and risk making the Invader sick again. Just as he shouldn't have put the chemicals in the batch of waffles had made the previous week. Or the ink in his master's lunch the previous day. Or the soap in his current work-in-progress waffles. Still, he had added all those many, _many_ times before. And the Irken had never died, no matter how bad his reaction to the food had been. Not even the beans and the meat had killed him, even if every time he came in contact with them they hurt oh-so-bad. His PAK always took care of him. There was nothing he should be worried about.

The maniac grin came back on the robot's face, his doubts and concerns completely forgotten, and he marched back towards the huge bowl filled with the dough for his sweets. He opened the bottle and purred half of it together with the other ingredients, before shrugging and dumping the rest of the powder inside too. It smelt good, so the more the merrier.

"And now, let's bake, Piggy!" He exclaimed, grinning cheerfully at the rubber pig he had set down on the table next to him and grabbing a spoon to start mixing the dough once again. The toy was just as dirty as the rest of the kitchen, but it didn't seem to mind, so GIR didn't mind either.

"My master will be super happy with these waffles! You'll see, Piggy, he gonna _luuuuuurve_ them!" He went on, spreading a bit of the contents of the bowl all around because of how fast he was turning the spoon. "And he will stop being _saaad_ about the Big-Head Boy finding out about the nice lady! Oh, 'cause he was _soooo_ upset about it! Like when he was so, _so_ upset for the end of the mission and he destroyed the lab, but then we rebuilt it and we watched movies and we ate sooooo many waffles! The master was puking at the end, _ew_! But as not badly as after my _lurve_ waffles. But he was happier too. So, I make him food again and he will puke and be happier! Or not puke and be even more happier!" He stopped his movements and looked down at the bowl, which was now half empty. "What do you think, Piggy?"

The toy didn't answer and GIR erupted in a round of mad giggling that lasted for a few minutes. Then he straightened himself, grinned again, and started to collect the dough he had spread all over the table. The next step would have been shaping the sweets and then cooking them. It was his favourite part. But not as favourite as smashing the eggs. That was the best. But not as best as mixing the ingredients together. Yes, that was for sure the thing he liked the most.

He stopped his movements, getting pensive for a moment. He liked that the most, but that was just his favourite thing about making waffles. Aside from eating them. And having his master eating them. But there were things he liked better. Like the Monkey Show and the movie he had seen a thousand times. But he liked his rubber Piggy more. Oh, he _loved_ his Piggy. It was maybe his favourite thing in the whole world. Aside from the couch. He and the couch had spent a lot of time together, had shared _so_ much. But it wasn't as good as the taquitos. Oh no, they tasted much better than the couch, like the waffles. Much, _much_ better. But not even those were his favourite thing in the universe. Actually, he wasn't sure of what his favourite thing in the universe was. He liked and loved so many things. Baking. Eating. Dancing. Screaming. Rolling on the floor. Blowing things up. And so, so, so many things he couldn't even count. The world around him was so nice and fun and colourful. It was all good, because he shouldn't have existed in the first place and yet he did exist and he had a good life.

GIR's grin widened and he clapped his hands together. How silly. Of course he knew what was his favourite thing in the universe. _His master_. He had taken him to that weird, funny, dummy planet. He gave him tasks and brought him around and let him play almost however he wanted. He made him fight and they battled all Earth and its oddities together. And, even if at the times the Irken got angry, and threatened him, and beat him up, and yelled, and insulted him, it was still good, because they were good together at the end of the day. And he liked all his master did. When he made other beings bleed and when he bled himself. When he killed others and when he got himself hurt. When he blew things up and when he got blown up himself. When he was planning to rain doom all over the Earth and when he was simply pulling Mary's leg for fun.

There were a few things he didn't like too, though. Like when his master was sad or depressed or when he was so gloomy and void and down as he had been since the end of the mission. Or that one time the Big-Head Boy had stopped chasing him. Back then he hadn't liked it because the Irken had sat down on the couch, _stealing_ it from him, and stayed there eating snacks and watching TV and not giving him attention or anything to do at all. He had missed his beloved couch so _badly_. It was one of his favourites among his favourite things. After the taquitos. And, of course, after his master. Even if in that occasion the Invader hadn't been such a favourite, since he had taken away his couch and his shows. Still, GIR had felt sad for him, and he had missed the couch very, _very_ badly. And that was why he hadn't really liked how his master was, that time when it had been Mary's fault. This current time, instead, it was a whole different thing.

The robot had been confused at first. He knew that his master _was_ sad, because he always had those empty, _scary_ eyes, even when he seemed to be like himself, but, at the same time, he acted like he _wasn't_ sad. At times he did, sitting in the couch and watching random things on the TV and eating snacks. But those were rare moments. For the rest, if he wasn't working in his fake plans to play with the Big-Head Boy, he was involving GIR himself in something. They went to that huge amusement park planet. Or they travelled through the Galaxy, to other nice places. Like that asteroid that was a huge restaurant with many yummy things. Or that other planet full of scary monsters. Or that moon that was used as a big, big television screen. The master now also baked with him at times and they had eating contests. It was so much fun, even when they got hurt.

In those occasions the Irken didn't look sad, he even laughed with him and yelled and jumped and ran. And yet the dark emptiness in his eyes was still there. GIR could tell, because he knew his master better than anyone else. It was as if the Irken was missing a piece that he couldn't replace yet. Perhaps it was his mission. Or he was homesick for a place where he couldn't go back. Or maybe he didn't like being faulty, even if it was weird because GIR was faulty too and yet he always felt so happy anyway. It was an odd kind of sadness, one that the robot couldn't completely understand, but that made him sad too. Not because he missed the couch or because he was bored or because he wasn't given things to do. Oh no. He got gifts and his master spent a lot of time with him just having fun and that was something he had never done before. Now the Computer liked them too and that was nice because usually it just said mean words and fought with their master, while now they were all getting along, and that was new too. So, there were a lot of good, new things he should be happy about. And he was happy about them. But he was sad too, because of the void in his master's eyes. It was always there and it spoilt the good parts.

Things had got a bit better, _slowly_ , after the Irken had started to see the nice lady GIR had finally got to meet that day. And she was very, _very_ nice. He should have really added her to the list of his favourite things. After all, there was Mary too, in the list, because he used to make his master active and happy about the mission. Now that the mission was no more, he still made the Invader less gloomy, because his master could defeat him, and hurt him, and also they could watch movies together, and share food and play videogames, as the nice lady had suggested they did. He could tell that the Irken liked his time with the human. He sulked less when the Big-Head Boy was around. However, the emptiness was still there and it made GIR sad too. And he didn't like being sad. It didn't make him feel good. It couldn't stay there, it _had_ to go away.

So, he had tried his best to cheer the Irken up and keep him from focusing on the big, bad void that at times still swallowed him away. He had tried to fill it with sammiches and waffles, but no matter how many he made, they never seemed to be enough. Even when his master was so full that he started the _disgusting_ puking, the emptiness still stood there, unfilled even with a too full stomach. It was such a bad thing. A doomy thing, of the not-fun kind.

GIR liked a lot of things. He liked almost everything. And there were some things that he truly loved. But he also disliked a few things. And he hated none. None _but_ the dark, bad, not-fun doomy void in the Invader's eyes. He wished he could have _destroyed_ it, since he couldn't fill it, but doing that would have meant destroying his master too and he didn't want to destroy his favourite thing in the universe. Because then there would have been no one left to take him around, to play with him, to watch movies with him, to bake with him, to _be_ with him. He couldn't have that.

So, he waited. He waited for the emptiness to go away. He waited for his master to find another mission. He waited for the nice lady to find a way to fix the Irken. He waited for the Big-Head Boy to pull the Invader out of the dark. He waited because he couldn't really do anything, aside from keeping his master there, alive and fed and busy and floating, while they both waited for a solution. It made him sad, but it didn't matter because, at the end of the day, he would have got to keep his favourite thing in the universe.

Knowing that he was _not_ his master's favourite thing in return didn't matter either. In Zim's heart and PAK, at the top of the list, there would have always been a far, far away planet, red as the blood that its people spilled in the name of its Empire. That couldn't change, even if the bloody planet didn't want his master anymore, even if it had never wanted him, because of the wrong things in the Invader's coding. The planet would have always remained the Irken's favourite thing in the universe. GIR could work with that. Because, at the end of the day, _he_ was always there with his master, not Irk.

Sooner or later, the wait would have ended. The emptiness would have been gone, his master would have been whole again and GIR wouldn't have been sad anymore. They would have gone back to how they used to be, to what they used to do. Or they would have been different and done different things. It didn't really matter, as long as the void was gone. As long as they would have both been happy again. That was what he wanted. That was why he had been…

The robot blinked slowly, staring down at the bowl in which he had once again collected the dough. What had he been doing? Oh, right. The _waffles_. He was making waffles for his master, so that he could eat them once he was done in the lab. The maniac grin came back.

"The master will _lurve_ them, Piggy! Because we're making them goodie. And even if they're not, he'll eat them and like them because we made them for him!" He exclaimed, giggling happily as he twirled around the kitchen table. "And they will make him happier again! Like the other times. You'll see!"

* * *

Hello guys!

Yes, I'm finally back! I had my first exam yesterday, so I dedicate this morning to finish this chapter and...I actually got started on the next one already, so it should be done pretty soon. Just, uh. I guess my brain is fried because all the studying I've been doing (and by the thought of all the studying I'll have to start doing very soon) and it came up with a very...weird idea. So, if you don't see me posting the chapter within the end of next week is because I've chicken out and I can't bring myself to do it. Yeah, that would totally be it.

Aside from my melted, insecure mind, back to the current chapter! The first scene is the continuation of where we left things off in the previous one. Dib's talk with Acelynn hardly solved anything, but perhaps it might be a push in the right direction? Who knows! What's sure is that our boy has been left, once again, with a lot to think about. Also, I kind of like the idea of Dib finally finding an adult that, while not believing him, still treats him decently. Someone whom he can't trust with the real truth, but whom he could turn to for an advice on a revised version of it. Or for other matters. And I think that Acelynn character could fill that role pretty well, in case, since she's been doing the same with Zim already! It's honestly one of the reasons why I wanted to build her personality as if it was made for the profession she had chosen, even if she is her own person and her quite unconventional ways too!  
As for the second scene, I have to confess that I'm quite proud of how it came out. Writing GIR's point of view melted my brain even more, but it was damn fun. I don't think I'll ever do it again any time soon, because, as you might have noticed, it's a messy thing, but it surely was an experience xD I hope that you'll enjoy it!

Now, my usual but always heartfelt thank you to all my readers! Knowing that people are interested to my work is what gets me in the mood to keep sharing what I write and it also fuels my inspiration a lot. Especially when I feel super insecure about my ideas and abilities. I have said this already, but your presence is really important to me!

And I'm sending a virtual hug to all my reviewers. You had the kindest words for me in your reviews to the last chapter and that was amazing. They made my day. Aaaand they are the reason why I hope I won't scare you off with my brain's latest idiotic raptus. Uh, I guess we'll see *sigh*  
Btw, sorry for the lack of answers to your comments, but I've been so awfully busy I literally had no time to reply to them. Still, I want to thank you all personally one by one! **GRIMMtheBITCH'1** , **RissyNicole** (you in particular, my dear, are a precious treasure, I hope you know that), **the-siRNA** , **Rocky Rooster** and the **Guest** reviewer!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	19. Chapter 19

**Author's notes:**

Hey everyone!

Uh, it's been a while since I wrote notes at the beginning, but this chapter needs them. First of all, I want to apologise for the delay. The chapter has been sitting in my computer for two weeks now and...I just kept chickening out and couldn't bring myself to post it. I've received such nice comments on the last chapter and so I'm freaking out about the fact that you might hate this one. Which leads me to the real reason why I'm writing notes at the beginning.

 **WARNING:** This chapter is _weird_ , for the lack of a better word. There are themes in this chapter that may sound as "sexual", but they are not meant to be and I didn't write them with anything of the sort in mind. Please keep this in mind while reading.  
That said, I blame med school and my currently fried brain and all the studying I'm doing for this crazy, absolutely _weird_ idea, but I couldn't get it out of my head. It's not...an end in itself. I actually have stuff (crucial one tbh) planned and based on this...uh, thing. It might seem totally random right now, but...This story has been based about weird ass coincidences till the very start and this is just another (a bit weirder) one. So...I think that this might fit, in the bigger picture? I guess you'll tell me if you share my point of view or not!

Okay, I said enough! I really want to thank all the people who have been following me up to this point. I honestly started to write this story to unload my renewed obsession for Invader Zim, but the interest I've been shown has inspired me a lot. I'm full of idea, for this part and for the second arc. And I have to thank you guys for this too. So by heart. Thanks a lot.

And of course the bigger merit goes to all the people who have left me comments in the previous chapters. I'm repeating myself again, but you people made my day every time with your comments and support. One more reason why I'd hate to disappoint you!

Okay, I'll leave you to the chapter now!

* * *

Aside from being most likely boundless, space's most evident characteristic was that it was completely _silent_. Sounds couldn't be propagated without a medium to carry them onwards, so nothing could disturb the eternal quietness that reign over the universe. There was no better place to escape reality, no better refuge from the loudness of everyday life. However, it was also to be said that, where the silence was the deepest, one's thoughts could echo the loudest.

Zim was bent over one of the screens of his Space Station, which had been orbiting around Earth almost since the day of his arrival on the planet, disguised and undetectable by the inferior human technology. He had left GIR at the base, on Earth, watching his shows, so the only sound that was heard was the low buzz of the machines and of the life support systems. The engines were off too, since the orbit was kept in place by the planet's own gravity. It wasn't as quiet as open space, but it was close enough. Besides, seeing the stars a little closer made him feel better.

It had been a _loud_ day. After Dib and Ms Xander had left the previous afternoon, he had locked himself up in his lab, not coming out till the next morning. He had been working frenetically over his newest project, the same one his counsellor had inadvertently suggested him, to stop his head from picturing the possible, disastrous consequences of the meeting between his nemesis and his therapist. He had studied to the smallest detail the composition of the Earthen atmosphere, selected the substances that shouldn't be there and that instead were because of the humans' disgusting machines, examined the consequences of the air pollution, on the rains but also on everything else.

It had quickly become clear that removing all those pollutants from the atmosphere wouldn't have completely solved the problem of precipitations toxicity, since those same dirty substances were constantly produced, but it should have at least made the rainfall more bearable to his physiology. He had decided that he would have built some sort of filtration and recycling system and kept it active, even if it would have still taken years to clean up the whole globe. He would have faced the more long-term issues if and when he would be forced to. After all, for now, he was coaxing himself to think on the short-term, since his future was nothing but uncertain. Filtering the polluting particles out of the air and dispersing them into space seemed to be the most effective solution, among the ones he had considered. Now he just needed to find a way to do it without sucking out the whole atmosphere in the process.

The thought of doing so and killing everything on the surface that needed air and oxygen to live had sent him evilly cackling for five good minutes, until he had abruptly stopped, once he had remembered that he wasn't trying to destroy the planet that time. Still, it sounded like a good plan and he had taken note of it, just in case. It could have come handful, not just for Earth, but for any other similar world he might choose to doom one day.

The Irken had been forced to abandon his work when the Computer had reminded him, for the fifth time, that it was time to get ready for Skool. He had ended up skipping breakfast and forgetting to grab the lunch that GIR had prepared for him. His sidekick had made a new kind of waffles, a fact that had concerned him for a moment, but he hadn't had the time to analyse the idea, because he had been forced to rush out of his base in a hurry, to be able to get to his class before the ringing of the bell.

He had managed it, but that was when the _loudness_ had begun, if he didn't count the screeches the robot had addressed him through the communication system because he hadn't tried his creations. The only way to calm him down had been swearing that he would have had them for dinner.

Once at Hi Skool, he had found out that some idiot had thought that it would have been fun to replace the usual bell with the sound of an air horn at the loudest volume possible. Zim had jumped in his chair when the awful noise had echoed in the building, his sensible antennae contracting painfully. By the third "bell ringing" he had sworn revenge on whoever had played that prank. After all, he had plenty of empty tanks in his lab, which meant that there was a lot of room for more human test subjects, and he still had so many diseases and venoms he wanted to experiment with.

To make things worse, Dib had hunted him down all day, trying to interrogate him about the reason why he had started to see Ms Xander. That game of hide and seek had involved, among the other things, plenty of yelling, which, while it wasn't anything new, had done nothing to improve Zim's already raging headache. He had fled in the air ducts during each break to escape his rival's questioning, something that was by now a habit for him, but he had made the unpleasant discovery that, inside those closed, metal spaces, the sound of the air horn was even louder. Also, he had done the ugly mistake of going to the cafeteria that day, instead of hiding in his and Gaz's spot as he usually did, and he had got caught in the crossfire when a food fight had suddenly erupted. That had led, aside from the high risk of being exposed to human food he was allergic to, to a half an hour spent hiding under a table in the middle of a blaring chaos. So, too much noise once again.

After that, there had been a few minor accidents, like him getting yelled in the face a very bad poem by a girl who had lost a bet and someone, perhaps the same idiotic pig who had installed the air horn bell, hacking into the Skool speakers system and transmitting the ugliest music he had ever heard during the period of his staying on Earth. All that considered, it wasn't very understandable that he had come to crave peace and quiet as soon as he had got back to his base, later in the afternoon. And, since his Space Station had a lab too, he had decided to take a break from the planet's loudness and seek a silent refuge among the stars to continue his analyses and experiments.

"Master, there is an incoming transmission," the Computer announced out of the blue, interrupting his calculations.

The Invader froze mid-gesture at those words. "Is it from the Massive?" He asked, unable to hide the nervousness that he was feeling. If the answer was positive, then the dreadful moment in which his condition would become official had come. There was no reason why Red and Purple would call him if not to have the pleasure to reveal the truth to him face to face. He clenched his fists, trying to get a hold of himself. He wasn't ready for it. He would never be, of course, but in that moment he was even less ready than he should have been. It would have been the most horrible conclusion to an already awful day.

"No, master," the machine answered and the Irken couldn't help letting out a relieved sigh. He had really feared the worst for a moment. "It's from Irk."

Zim raised a brow at that. Who could be contacting him? From his home world? It wasn't like he had friends or people who wanted to talk to him. Unless it was...Of course, he should have thought of him immediately. After all, he had told him to call if he had felt like to. Just, he had never expected the other to take his words at heart.

"Put it through, Computer," he ordered, lowering his eyes back on the screen. He hit a couple of buttons, finishing the operation he had been working on, and, when he lifted his gaze again, he found Skoodge's grinning face waiting for him.

"Zim! Hi!" The sturdy Invader greeted him, with a cheerfulness that for a second reminded him of GIR. "Are you busy? Is it a bad moment for a call?"

Zim shook his head. "I'm just analysing some data, nothing too vital," he answered with a small shrug, but his fingers kept dancing quickly on the keyboard as he spoke. "What's the reason of your call? Did you need something from Zim?"

Skoodge looked slightly dejected for a moment, his antennae lowering from where they had perked up. "Uh no. You said that I could call if I wanted to, so I thought to check in," he answered, tilting his head slightly, eyes widened. "Or you didn't want me to? I'm on my break and I had nothing to do and I...I also thought that I could keep you up-to-date about the Empire, since you're so far away from the rest of us. I know that our Tallest are very busy and...well, they aren't always very forthcoming when it comes to share information and such...Especially with us."

The thin Irken's magenta eyes locked back on his counterpart at the last sentence. His former fellow soldier looked slightly uncomfortable, as if he had just realised that he shouldn't have spoken those words about their leaders. For a moment, Zim was tempted to exploit it to torment him a bit, but, in the end, he decided not to do it. The other Invader might have turned out to be his only contact left with his people and he didn't want to risk chasing him away too. He might have needed him once his banishment would have become official.

"Yeah. The few times I tried to ask them something, they more or less shut the transmission in my face," he answered after a moment of silence and noticed the other instantly relaxing. "Also, if I said that you can call, you can call Zim, Skoodge. If I'm too busy, I won't answer you." He crossed his arms on his chest. "So, do you have news?"

Skoodge's face lightened up again. "Nothing vital, but I think that you'd like to know that I found Tenn. She's still demoted and she's working underground, not too far from where I'm stationed. She's good, even if she's still pissed off about the malfunctioning SIR Units incident." He scratched the back of his head. "She gave me a weird look when I told her that you said hi, but she said that you can call her too, if you want. I can give you her coordinates." He looked pensive for a moment. "For the rest, there's nothing much to say. Operation Impending Doom II is almost over. There are only a few planets still not fully invaded and the Armada is taking care of a lot of Organic Sweeps. I guess that's why I haven't been contacted by the Tallest about my holiday yet."

Zim let his head fall forward slightly. Apparently, he wasn't the only one who had a talent for denying the obvious. Or perhaps all Irkens did, when it came to their Tallest. It was inevitable, considering the level of devotion they were forced to feel for them by their coding. "I would like to speak to Tenn sooner or later, so leave me those coordinates. I'll have my Computer locate her later," he answered, deciding not to voice his thoughts. It was better for his former fellow soldier to stay oblivious of his fate, at least for now. It would have saved him a lot of unnecessary emotions.

"Zim has two favours to ask," he resumed after a moment, eyes falling back on the screen before him. "You must inform me when the Armada is almost done with the Sweeps." This way he would have known when the Tallest would have been about to call him and break the news. "Also, I need you to download a couple of databases for Zim, since I don't have remote access to them." He tapped a few words on the keyboard. Since he didn't want to call the Massive to request more technology he might need for his current project, he would get the blueprints, have the materials shipped directly from the producer planets and build everything himself. Safer, quicker and it would avoid any contact with his leaders. Besides, it would have been easier to modify the projects than to make the modification he needed on the already finished machines. "I'm sending you the list of the information I need."

The sturdy Irken nodded. "I can do both easily! I still have all my access codes," he replied, clearly happy to be of use. He looked down to another screen, quickly going through the list. "Wow, this is pretty advanced technology. Are you planning something big for your invasion?"

"I am...conducting a science project," Zim replied with a small, slightly nervous grin. He knew that Skoodge wasn't the type to ask too many questions, but he still would have rather him not to inquire at all. "I'll let you know how it goes. Now, I need to go back to work. Enjoy the rest of your...uh, holiday, Skoodge."

"Thank you! I'll send those pieces of information as soon as possible. And I'll tell Tenn you'll give her a call soon, if I see her," the other Irken stated, nodding eagerly once again. "I'll leave you to your plans. Till next time, Zim!"

The thin Invader offered a brief wave before the screen went back again. A few moments later, a message was received, with the coordinates of Tenn's location. He saved them, not really sure if calling her would have been wise or not. Unlike Skoodge, while not hating his guts as most did, she wasn't exactly friendly towards him either. However, it was also true that she was a better hacker than his former fellow soldier and she had better connections in the territories under Irken dominion, so he might have needed her competences too, sooner or later. He scratched the side of his head. It was really complicated to have to fence for himself, without the support of the Empire. He would have to get used to it.

"Master, should I assume that these _social calls_ will become a regular thing, from now on?" The Computer questioned, interrupting his thoughts, a hint of teasing amusement in its voice. "It's the second time in less than two months, while before it happened... _never_."

"Shut up, bunch of stupid circuits," the alien grumbled shooting a glare at the screen through which the machine was addressing him. "Zim isn't doing...social calls. I am...uh...building contacts! Yes! And gathering information."

"If that's what you're doing, it's a very smart move, master," the voice commented, even if the hilarity was still present in its tone. "If I had known that all it took to make you open your eyes and start using your brain properly was a trauma and a bit of depression, I would have created these conditions much sooner."

The Irken's glare intensified. "I have learnt a very fitting gesture at Hi Skool, to answer to such words," he claimed solemnly, before showing the screen his middle claw. "Translate it for yourself. And now let Zim work."

The Computer emitted a series of buzzing noises, which could have been either a laugh or a stream of insults, but it didn't answer again with anything comprehensible. The fact pleased the Invader, who turned his attention back to his calculations, fully intending to immerse himself back in his project. And he did, for a few minutes, but the calm didn't last as much as he would have liked.

" _MASTEEEEER_!"

GIR's screeching voice echoed in the whole Station, killing the nice silence Zim was so much appreciating and causing his antennae to twitch at the memories of all the _loud_ , unpleasant sounds he had been forced to endure during the day. He wasn't ready for more yet. He wouldn't be for a whole week, most likely. Unfortunately, he couldn't exactly avoid his sidekick for that long. It was a miracle that he had had those hours all for himself.

The robot burst inside the room, carrying in a hand a plate filled with waffles and his rubber pig in the other. "Master, master, _master_! It's dinner time!" He announced happily and then erupted in one of his usual fits of giggling. "You have to try the special waffles Piggy and I made for yooooou yesterday! You _promiiiiiised_!"

The Invader let out a frustrated groan, but the pleading expression that his SIR Unit offered him, the one that promised endless, _loud_ crying if he hadn't complied, made every objection he had been thinking of brining up die on his tongue. When had he become so easy to persuade? Why did he always let GIR have his way with him? _He_ should be the one giving orders and making demands, not taking them as it happened far too often.

"Fine, GIR. I will eat your waffles," he gave in, after having pondered for the briefest moment to say no. It wouldn't have been the smartest choice.

He detached himself from the console and reached out to take the plate he was being offered, before letting himself fall in the closest chair. He brought the sweets towards his face and sniffed them, wary, giving them a poke too. They were all stuck together, since they had cooled off and most likely remained one above the other since the previous day, but the colour was more or less normal and they didn't smell bad. They just looked a bit _soapy_. He could perceive a foreign scent too, in the mix, one he couldn't identify, but since it didn't cause any negative reaction in his body, he decided that they should be safe enough to be tasted.

The robot stared expectantly as his master studied his creations and then let out a squeal of joy when the Irken finally took the first bite, gaining a glare from said alien because of the irritating, high-pitched noise. Zim rolled his eyes and then went back to his snack, taking another, bigger forkful. The weird scent had to belong to something that had a similar taste and, while he wasn't sure that he truly loved it, it made a good job covering up the flavour of the soap, which was something he could appreciate. Without detergent the sweets would have tasted much better, but they were hardly the worst he had ever eaten. Besides, he hadn't consumed any form of nourishment in over twenty-four hours and, while Irkens didn't need to eat as regularly as humans did, he still preferred working on a full spooch.

The waffles were finished in the matter of five minutes and GIR enthusiastically grabbed the empty plate when the Invader handed it back to him, watching his master sprawling a bit in the chair. The alien didn't look like he was about to puke, so the robot decided that he had made a very good job that time. Perhaps he should made more. It was a pity that whatever was in the small bottle was finished. The Irken had to have liked it, since he hadn't complained about any weird flavour.

"Are you feeling happier, master?" He asked, jumping on his spot. "Did you _lurve_ GIR's waffles? Uh? Uh? _Uh_? The floor liked them too! The sticky thingie they come from was spread aaaaall over it, yesterday! But I cleaned up, as you told me!" He brought a finger to his chin, stopping his movements abruptly. "I think."

Zim squinted at him for a moment. The kitchen had seemed clean when he had got home from Skool, but he hadn't stopped to check thoroughly. It was better if he did, once he would have headed back to the base. You could never trust the crazy SIR Unit. For all he knew, GIR could have simply moved the whole dirt from the floor to the ceiling. That would have hardly solved the problem. He made a disgusted face at the mental image that the thought brought into his mind and he banished it immediately. He would have worried about it later.

"The waffles were...edible," he conceded after a moment, nodding with a hint of approval. "Even if there was soap in them. _Again_."

He brought a hand up to the collar of his uniform, tagging it. He was starting to feel a bit warm. And yet, he could have sworn that the temperature in the room had been perfect until a few minutes before. Had GIR messed up with the environment controls? It wouldn't have been the first time. The robotic menace somehow managed to screw up things even without touching them. "Computer, adjust the heating of the Station back to standard levels."

"Uh, master, I cannot comply. All the environment controls are already set to standard levels. No one has changed them since you arrived," the machine answered, sounding almost puzzled. "Are you feeling alright?"

"No, I'm not! Zim is... _hot_!" The Invader protested, tagging harder at the collar of his uniform. The slight warmth was growing, slowly but steadily, and it was already beginning to border an uncomfortable level. At the same time, though, it wasn't such a bad feeling. His skin tingled with the heat in a way that was foreign but pleasant. What was making him freak out a bit was the fact that he had no idea of what was happening and it confused the hell out of him. He wanted it to be gone. Quickly. "Check those systems again!"

"Master, I assure you that there is nothing wrong with the temperature of the Station. You can check it yourself," the Computer repeated, calmly, emitting a sound that was very alike to a sigh. Its tone then became more careful as it offered a possible explanation. "Perhaps it was something in the waffles you just ate...?"

Zim's antennae perked up at the idea and his magenta eyes snapped towards GIR, who was staring curiously at him. "For the Tallest, what did you put in those waffles this time, GIR?!" He exclaimed throwing his hands in the air, before going back to tag his uniform. The heat had spread everywhere in his body by now, making him sweat slightly, but it had also become somehow less bothering. It was a pushing, pulsing sensation, one that suggested that he should be doing something about it. The problem was that he had no idea of _how_ he should be dealing with it. He eyes slipped closed for a moment and he sucked in a gulp of air. Why was he breathing more quickly, even if he hadn't moved at all since sitting down? "GIR, answer the question."

The robot giggled happily, clearly oblivious to his master's weird discomfort. "I doooon't know! I found this bottle with this nice, smelly powder and I put it in the waffles," he chirped in reply, with a wide grin. "It tasted _good_ , didn't it? You seemed to like it, master!"

"Well, Zim doesn't like it anymore," the alien grumbled under his breath, even if it wasn't exactly the truth. Under the uneasiness he was experiencing there was still that hint of strange delight he couldn't define and that made the whole situation much more bearable. "Computer, analyse the contents of the snacks. _Fast_. I want to know if I'm _dying_."

"I strongly doubt, sir. Nothing in your current vitals suggests such a thing," the machine talked back, but a mechanical arm came out of the floor and snatched the empty plate from the giggling SIR Unit's hands, taking it away for in-depth analyses.

The Irken didn't even bother to tell the Computer to shut up, too distracted by the mixed signals that his body was sending him. On his back, his PAK was buzzing slightly, clearly as puzzled as he was about the feeling, which however it didn't seem to recognise as harmful. The fact would have been a reassurance, if he hadn't been too busy trying to keep his mind clear from the foggy heat that had started to affect his senses too. His antennae had started to, for the lack of a better word, _tingle_ as well, in a way that he had never experienced before. It wasn't exactly an itch, nor a throb. It was almost a mix of the two sensations, but at the same time something completely different too.

His hand crept upwards, along his temple, towards the base of one of the appendages, but he realised what he was doing and stopped before his fingers could close around it. Irkens were very, _very_ careful with their antennae and avoided to touch them as much as possible. They were extremely sensible _and_ sensitive. They could pick up certain sound frequencies and vibrations and perceive smells. A mild blow on them could turn out to be very painful and that was the reason why some instructors yanked their recruits' feelers when the latter were misbehaving. In other contests, however, no Irken ever touched another's antennae. Or their own, if it could be avoided.

A low sound escaped Zim's throat, a mix of frustration, confusion and a pleased sigh. The tingling was getting stronger and his fingers now itched badly to reach out for his sensible appendages. So, so weird. He had never experienced anything like that before. He _needed_ to touch them, even if he knew that he shouldn't for more reasons than the ones he could name. However, the feeling was getting unbearable, to the point that he couldn't bring himself to care anymore about what he should or shouldn't do. What harm could a bit of _scratching_ do? Just enough to placate that crazy impulse and hopefully get a bit of control back. It was an emergency.

He clenched and unclenched his fists a few times, undecided, but in the end instinct won over reason, also because even a trained Irken Invader had a breaking point, and his claws gently closed around one of the feelers, half scratching, half stroking the surface. The shock of heat that was sent down his spine at the contract was completely unexpected. Zim had always been one of those recruits who got his antennae yanked by the instructors, for a long list of motives, and he had happened to brush them from time to time, while getting dressed, putting his disguise on or even while gesticulating. However, never, before that very moment, he had had such a reaction from a simple touch. Or from anything else, for the matter.

An even greater amount of warmth rushed to his face, green skin taking a purplish hue, catching him off guard and making him shudder, but the most appalling thing was the sound that was torn out of his lips. Half way between a low hiss and a moan, both conveying emotions that had nothing to do with pain. It was more similar to the satisfied sound one could make after tasting something particularly _delicious_ , but the pleasure it expressed ran on a much deeper, _unexplored_ level.

"M-Master?" The Computer called after a moment of absolutely awkward silence, trying to catch the dazed Invader's attention.

The Irken snapped back to the present and he instantly removed his hand from his antenna, as if it burnt, a horrified expression on his face. He stared at his own fingers, almost expecting them to have turned into some weird monsters. If the situation had been different, he would have found the fact that the machine had stuttered, something that had never happened before, incredibly _hilarious_ , but he was too freaked out by the effects that whatever he had ingested was having on him to bring himself to appreciate the event.

"Get Zim those results, Computer! _Now_!" He yelled, not knowing if he was sounding more desperate, humiliated or simply appalled. What on Irk had that sound been? And that feeling? So _mortifying_. But it had felt as good as very few things he had experienced, in a twisted way. His claws were itching to touch again and the tingle in his antennae felt like a plea for that odd contact. He didn't wish to emit another of those weird noises, but the heat was growing and he was torn between wanting the feel that sensation again and being grossed out by it.

Hesitantly, he raised both his hands upwards again, his back resting heavily against the seatback, and repeated the rubbing motion, more slowly this time, and careful to keep his teeth clenched to stay quiet. A few, muffled sounds still slipped from his throat, but they were silent enough not to be as humiliating as the first and he felt himself gradually relaxing as he kept going.

His eyes slid shut as the heat in his body became gradually more bearable and almost completely pleasant. The strokes both sparked pleasure along his spine and soothed him, lulling into some sort of warm, stunned trance. Soon he fell so deeply into it that the only things he remained aware of were the feeling of his gloves caressing his antennae and the hot, tingling pleasure that the act provided him with. He didn't even realise that he had started to _purr_ in contentment, half curling in his chair, the horror and the other troublesome feelings completely forgotten.

He couldn't have said how long he had remained there, but gradually the intense feeling started to dissipate and the heat to fade away, allowing his mind to become clearer and clearer until the moment when he dropped his hands, the purring sound stopping abruptly, and he found himself blinking in confusion, limbs still half numb from how limp they had become.

The Computer cleared the throat it didn't have. "Master?" He tried, not for the first time, but, unlike his previous attempts, this one was registered by the Irken, whose eyes snapped towards the screen it was currently using. "Are you...uh, _done_?"

The words seemed to be what Zim needed to completely wake up from his dazed state and he jumped on his feet at them, stumbling and almost ending up falling on his face because his legs gave out under him, clearly not ready to support such a sudden movement. Luckily, his PAK limbs worked much better than his biological ones and stopped the fall before he could impact with the cold metal of the Station.

"What...What happened?!" He exclaimed incredulous, as soon as he had straightened up again, and then spun around, pointing an accusing finger towards GIR, who was rolling on the floor snickering. " _YOU_! Stupid robotic menace, you _drugged_ Zim!"

"I didn't!" The robot protested, but the denial was ruined by his giggles. "And the sounds the master was making were so _cute_!" He emitted a long sound that was the bad imitation of a purr. "Like a kitty cat! _Aw,_ so adorable!" He then stopped laughing. "Even if the first one was weird. _Grooooss_!"

The alien's face warmed up again, but this time with indignation. "Zim is not _cute_! I'm an Irken Invader! I'm a scary, cruel, merciless creature of _doom_!" He shouted, puffing his chest out and trying to look proud, but at the same time he did his best to ignore the SIR Unit's last statement. _That_ sound. He shuddered in disgust. He wanted to forget about it and not think of it ever again. "Stop mocking the Mighty Zim! And you're still in troubles, GIR! I demand to know what you put in those horrible waffles!"

"I might be able to answer to that, sir," the Computer interjected before the discussion could degenerate even further. "I tested the crumbles of the snacks as you ordered." The screen closest to the Irken lit up, showing the three-dimensional reproduction of a few chemical formulas. "Aside from the soap, the only unusual element I found in the dough is an Earthen spice with several uses, both medical and culinary, called "cinnamon". I believe it to be the powder GIR mentioned earlier. For what my analyses show, on Irken physiology it works as a mild aphrodisiac."

Zim narrowed one eye, showing no sign of understanding at the word. "A mild... _what_?" He asked, tilting his head. "What is this...afrosiac...or whatever! What's that supposed to do?"

" _Aphro-di-siac_ ," the machine corrected, with a hint of exasperation. Of course the Invader had no idea of what it was talking about. He came from a race that had been producing smeets artificially for millennia by now. Biological reproduction was a concept they knew just theoretically. Or that they didn't know at all, in most cases, since it was utterly _irrelevant_. How was he supposed to explain the meaning of the word to his master, without giving him a mixed lesson of biology, sociology and sex education? Better sticking to the basic scientific facts.

"It's a category of substances that are supposed to enhance...pleasant feelings derived from touch and the need for the latter." Not the most accurate definition, but the alien seemed to be following its explanation and that was its goal. "They cause the release of certain hormones and chemicals in your body, which cause the heat you've felt and make the already sensitive spots in your body, for example your antennae, even more sensitive, especially if touched. Your PAK hasn't filtered it out because it hasn't recognised this cinnamon as something harmful. It makes sense. The combination of chemicals released as a consequence to its ingestion is recognised as one with _positive_ effects. For this reason, it isn't labelled as a toxin or a venom, even if I can understand that the effects can be...confusing and overwhelming because of their intensity, especially the first time."

Zim crossed his arms on his chest, looking thoughtful for a few moments. "So, you're telling me that this Earthen cinnamon thingie make Zim's amazing body release happy hormones?" He asked in the end, a frown starting to form on his face. "A bit like those stupid Venusian radiations?"

The Computer made a sound of disagreement. "Not exactly. You may have noticed that the effects are... _quite_ different. Both things seem to compromise your control on reality, yes. However, while the radiations interfered with your PAK, the cinnamon just messes up with your body chemistry, which means that it doesn't change your personality. It just temporarily alters your ability to...think clearly, you could say. Humans are pretty fond of this kind of things."

The Irken shook his head and shuddered again in disgust. "Zim doesn't like it. I don't want that filthy, spicy thing anywhere near me ever again! It's a dangerous drug for me!" He proclaimed, turning to shoot a burning glare to GIR. "And that's an order! Never put that stuff in my food again. I can't afford such embarrassing, human weaknesses! Especially not _now_!"

The robot lowered his head, dejected for having been scolded. "But I just wanted the master to be happy! And the thingie made the master do happy noises, so it can't be bad, can it? Can it?" He protested, unhappily. "You were having looot of fun with it! And your antennae too!"

For some reason he couldn't grasp, his sidekick's words brought a bit of an embarrassed flush back on the Invader's cheeks. " _You lie_! Zim wasn't enjoying himself!" He denied, incredulous, but at the same time he felt like _he_ was the one lying. It had been a _very_ pleasant experience, even if it had been just as disturbing. "I didn't even know what I was doing! Never again, GIR. Never ever."

"But _master_!"

"No, GIR. I will get rid of any trace of cinnamon on this filthy ball of dirt and..."

"Before you decide to completely banish it from your life, master, could I make a suggestion?" The Computer interrupted again. It didn't wait for an answer, because from the look on the alien's face, it was clear that the reply would have been a dry "no", and went on: "This...embarrassing episode could actually have some _use_ for us. For _you_."

Zim raised a brow, looking puzzled once again and especially deeply sceptical. "What is that supposed to me? How can I exploit something that puts me in a position of disadvantage?"

"Consider my words carefully, master. This substance is a...drug, if you want, that isn't detected by an Irken PAK and, even if it is, it isn't filtrated. Its effects are temporarily and mostly harmless, if one doesn't count the damage made to the pride of whom suffers through them," the machine explained in a tone that turned slyer and slyer as it kept going. "It would be perfect for a... _prank_ aimed to, for example, take revenge on someone by humiliating them. An _Irken_ someone, of course."

The Invader blinked a couple of times, staring at the screen blankly, clearly not having caught up with what it had been suggesting. However, the clueless expression didn't last much longer. Suddenly, the confused magenta orbs lit up with realisation and then widened in horror as the scenery that had been painted between the lines abruptly became clear and manifested.

"Computer, are you suggesting that Zim..." The Irken gasped, clearly appalled by the idea, but then he seemed to reconsider the plan. What harm could a small, mostly harmless trick do, compared to what they had done to him? To what they were planning to do to him? He deserved to start getting some payback for the lies and the insults and the betrayal. And they deserved to face the wrath of Zim. Even Ms Xander had said that he needed to "scale down" his extreme devotion and loyalty. It could be a good place where to start from. He could have always feigned ignorance in the aftermath. Besides, he doubted that they could come to hate him more than they already did.

A maniac smirk blossomed on his face. "Computer, I knew that we could have achieved great things together, if we had started to listen to each other!" He claimed loudly, completely rephrasing his reply. "This plan is evilly _brilliant_! So worth of the Mighty Zim!" He narrowed his eyes with determination and grabbed his robot by the foot, starting to drag him towards the teleporter room. "Come, GIR. Tonight we make cinnamon donuts!"

The SIR Unit squealed in delight, excited by the fact that his master seemed to have changed his mind about his newest secret ingredient, and the Computer was left behind to wish, for the umpteenth time, that it had eyes so that it could have rolled them in exasperation. However, since it wasn't the case, it was once again left to reproduce a scoff.

"Master, if you had listened to me since the very start, at this point we would have already conquered the whole solar system," it deadpanned, its voice echoing in the now deserted Station.


	20. Chapter 20

Dib eyed his alien rival from where the latter sat on the other side of the classroom. Zim had been smirking like a madman all morning. The ugly, satisfied, _dangerous_ type of smirk that promised nothing but troubles for whoever or whatever the Invader was targeting.

At first he had worried that the Irken might have been about to put in action one of his extremely effective, even if not meant plans for world demolition. However, he had quickly realised that there was none of the signs that usually indicated that his nemesis was plotting the destruction of the planet. Zim hadn't been avoiding him, not more than he usually did at least, nor he had been exaggeratedly trying to attract his attention. He hadn't been tinkering with any weird device nor he had drawn complicated, unfinished blueprints during classes. He hadn't shouted threats nor he had suddenly burst into one of his creepy laughs. All he had been doing had been snickering to himself and doodling _donuts_ , of all things.

Dib didn't know what to think. Was it all an act to distract him? The Invader had already employed that tactic, quite successfully unfortunately for the teen, in a couple of occasions, the most significant being the first time the alien had pretended to destroy Earth through that cruel simulation he had subjected the human to. Even if he would have never admitted it, those awful memories still gave Dib nightmares after every particularly harsh fight.

However, something didn't fit in the scenario. The Zim he was looking at wasn't a Zim wild with the adrenaline of plan that was slowly starting to take form. This was a _satisfied_ Zim, proud of a plan that he knew being already in motion and _unstoppable_. The awareness should have alarmed him, but instead it just made him curious. Perhaps, if he had told his rival that he wasn't trying to make him talk about his therapy, the other would have agreed to reveal to him what he was truly up to.

His chance to approach the Irken came with the lunch break. Dib made sure to linger back in his last classroom, to be sure to arrive a bit later than his usual to the cafeteria. Gaz was already sitting at their customary table, but he had already warned her a couple of hours before that he wouldn't have joined her that day. She had just shrugged and told him to "have fun chasing Zim". The memory almost made him groan. Was he really _that_ predictable?

Shaking his head, he went to stand in line and grab his food. As he waited for his turn, he looked around and spotted the alien towards the bottom of the room, sitting on his own, as he had always done, aside from the couple of times when Zim had chosen to eat with him and his sister in the last weeks. The smirk was still in place and his nemesis was tapping on what looked like a weird tablet with one hand and eating a clearly GIR-made sandwich with the other. He seemed lost in his little world, unaware of being watched. Good. That should have allowed him to join the Invader before the latter could notice him approaching and flee the room.

Once his tray was loaded with food, the teen nodded to himself and marched towards the Irken's seat, ready to do whatever would have been necessary to force him to stay and talk. He stopped right in front of his rival, on the other side of the table, expecting the alien to acknowledge him, but it didn't happen. Zim's disguised eyes remained fixed on his portable screen, quickly moving among lines of data written in his mother language, and the Invader seemed to remain oblivious of his presence. Dib paused for a moment. Maybe his nemesis was really planning something after all. He refused to believe that he was just reading a book or random information.

"Zim," he called, steading both his voice and his posture as he sat his tray down, prepared to reach out and catch the other in the case he had tried to flee. However, he also did his best not to sound too threatening and raised his hands in what was supposed to be a reassuring gesture when the alien's startled gaze landed on him. "I'm not here to question you about…what happened the other day. You have my word. Assuming that it's worth something to you."

The Irken narrowed his eyes suspiciously, body tense, ready to leap on his feet. The wide grin was gone, replaced by a much more belligerent expression. "What do you want from Zim, then, Dib-thing?" He half asked, half growled, hand snatching the device off the table and out of his rival's sight. He wasn't sure how much of his language the human had learnt, but he couldn't risk having him discovering that he had been studying the planet's atmosphere and its pollution levels. He didn't want him in his way when he would have gone and made his surveys that night.

Dib took a sit in front of him, not missing the hurry with which his rival had hid his alien tablet. The gesture had looked fishy, but he didn't address it yet. "You've been smirking to yourself all day. Don't you think I haven't noticed," he pointed out in a serious tone, leaning in slightly and picking up his fork in a way that almost looked threatening. "I know that you're planning something, alien scum. That you've _done_ something. Be sure that I'll find out what it is."

At this point, the teen would have expected the Invader to deny that he was up to something, maybe bringing out some ridiculous excuse to explain why he had been grinning like a madman, or to arrogantly tell him that he couldn't stop his amazing plans this time, with the right amount of insults to follow. Those were Zim's classical reactions to being discovered. However, by now, after two months of being caught off guard, Dib should have known better than trying to predict his nemesis's responses to his words. In fact, the Irken did none of those two things and, instead, he started to smirk again, eyes sparkling behind the violet contact lenses.

"What I'm doing is none of your business, worm child. So, you stay out of Zim's way," he claimed, but he didn't sound too annoyed. He wanted to be, because the human was a bit like GIR, meaning that he had a talent for spoiling his most perfect plans, even when he shouldn't have been able to. However, he couldn't bring himself to feel the right dose of irritation, because all he could think about was the package that he had sent that morning and that was currently travelling through space, heading towards the Massive. "You wouldn't be able to stop Zim, even if you wanted to. Which isn't the case anyway."

Dib raised an eyebrow, a bit puzzled by the Invader's almost _cheerful_ behaviour. Zim was definitely in a good mood, another sign that there would have soon been doom raining over someone. "And why shouldn't I want to stop you?" He asked, frowning in confusion.

The Irken rolled his eyes, taking another mouthful of sandwich and chewing it loudly. "Zim won't tell you," he claimed, in an almost solemn tone. Then, without giving the teen a real chance to answer, he went on. "But since you keep bugging me as you're doing and since you're even _begging_ , I think that I will change my mind and show magnanimousity."

The human's eyebrow moved higher, expectant. "Zim, that's not even a word," he pointed out.

" _Silence_! Foolish creature!" Zim exclaimed loudly enough to cause all the students, aside from Gaz, to turn and look at them. As always, he ignored them. The volume of his voice went back to his standard one. "I don't hear the begging, Dib-pig?"

Dib threw his hands in the air. "Are you serious?" He asked, incredulous, but, when his amber irises met the other's violet ones again, he was left with no doubts that his rival was indeed deadly serious.

He scoffed. He wouldn't do it. He wasn't going to play along when the other could just be fooling him for his personal amusement. He wouldn't have asked nicely and said "please" only to give the bastard the satisfaction of getting what he wanted. Especially since he had no idea of whether or not there was something for him to get in exchange. Knowing his nemesis, this could all be a ploy to make him embarrass himself, so that the Irken could laugh at him. Maybe there was no great plan, maybe the Invader wasn't up to anything, for once, aside from being his usual jerk self.

However, the curiosity was just as strong as the reluctance. Zim's smirk had seemed so _sincerely_ amused. Something _had_ to be going on, even if it might have been something very stupid. Besides, could he really take his chances and let the alien be, free of completing his potentially evil plans, just because he didn't want to risk being mocked? He had swallowed his pride for the sake of the planet so many times in the past. Why shouldn't he do it once more?

" _Fine_ , you space monster," he grumbled under his breath, giving in and poking his food for a moment. Then he sucked a breath in. "Can you _please_ tell me what the Might Zim has been smirking about all morning?" His voice filled with sarcasm as he spoke every word, but his nemesis seemed to be satisfied anyway, because the grin on his face just grew wider. "I'm _begging_ you to _enlighten_ my _inferior_ brain, my future _overlord_."

Zim's eyes sparkled with malice for a moment. "You should beg me more often, Dib-stink. It _suits_ you," he commented, brutal amusement in his voice. His smirk was sharper too now, but he pushed the plate with his sandwich aside and leant in, looking like he was about to confide a precious secret. Perhaps informing the human of his small revenge wasn't the smartest move, but he couldn't help himself. He _needed_ to brag about it and he needed to do it now. He couldn't wait for his session with the counsellor in the afternoon, not after he had been gloating about it for hours, since sending the package off. "Are you ready to be amazed by Zim's evil wits?"

"Just hurry up and tell me, space boy," the teen shot back, rolling his eyes, but he found himself leaning closer too, impatiently, until they were both half bent over the table, faces just a few inches apart. He refused to admit that the situation reminded him a bit of the closeness they had shared before the start of the cursed kiss in the Voot Cruiser, because there was no way he was thinking about _that_ again.

The Irken's expression became even more conspiratorial as he prepared to speak. "Zim is…playing a prank." The words were whispered, loud enough to be heard above the noise of the cafeteria, but still quiet enough to be intelligible just for the two of them.

Dib blinked a couple of times as his mind registered the sentence and analysed it. "A…prank?" He repeated, sounding dazed. He had to have heard it wrong. That couldn't be the big secret, the source of his nemesis's unending amusement. It might have been one hell of a prank, but no alien Invader should have sounded so proud and satisfied about a simple joke.

"Yes, Dib-stink, a _prank_ ," Zim confirmed, even more amused by the human's incredulity. He knew that his rival had been expecting something huge and dangerous and now he had to be having some issue believing his words. "Are you that unfamiliar with your own language?"

The teen glared hard, but once again he only obtained to see his nemesis's smirk widening. "Shut up, space moron. I know what a prank is!"

He narrowed his eyes. Perhaps it was the Invader who wasn't completely familiar with the term. Maybe he meant something much nastier than what a human would have thought of, hearing that definition. His mind flew back to the alien's jokes that he had experienced on his own skin in the past. There was that one time when Zim had built a simulation of the perfect life for him, so that he could smash it before his eyes in the end, and all because he had thrown a muffin at him. Or that other one when the Irken had flooded the whole City with a giant water balloon to get back at him for having shoved him in a pool. Or the room with the moose. He couldn't help a small shiver from running down his spine. That considered, perhaps he should be _very_ worried.

"Who are you targeting?" He questioned with a hint of hostility. "The planet? _Me_?"

The Invader scoffed. "Worm child, not everything revolves around your disgusting planet and your even filthier, smellier self."

"Oh, and let me guess! Everything revolves around Zim, doesn't it? Self-centred jerk."

As an answer, Zim lifted a hand and used it to shove Dib's face away, successfully pushing him off the bench and landing him with his back on the floor, legs still half tangled with his seat. He then shot his rival a glare and sat back down, picking up his half-eaten sandwich and giving it a vicious bite, his eyes clearly telling that he would have liked so much to bite off a piece of the human instead. The words had stung, more than the other could imagine, more than they should have. They had sounded to him a lot like the kind of mocking his Tallest could have addressed him behind his back and the idea _almost_ ruined his mood.

The teen landed with a pained sound and let out another groan as he withdrew his legs from the bench to push himself up in a seated position. He had banged his head against the floor, which had left him with an unpleasant throbbing feeling, and for that he glared back at the Irken, unimpressed by the silent threat hidden in the bite.

"You're a damn psycho," he complained, rubbing his aching nape as he stood up. Damn. He often forgot how much stronger than he looked his nemesis was. Cursed Irken physiology. He brushed his clothes and sat back down, picking up his fork and lifting a mouthful of vegetables. "Seriously, what's the matter with you? You're always so damn touchy, but that was _hardly_ the worst thing I called you. That shove was totally undeserved!"

"What you deserve is for Zim to decide, inferior being. And I say that you deserve all the pain I can inflict to you," the Invader shot back, voice filled with distaste as he shoved what was left of his lunch in his mouth. "And one day I will deliver you your ultimate demise."

"Keep dreaming, space boy," Dib muttered under his breath. "I can promise that you're the one who'll end up strapped to a lab table and dissected." Empty words, spoken mostly out of habit. It was one of their most overused scripts, after him yelling that Zim was an alien and the other replying that he was a perfectly normal human being. The words were so familiar by now that they slipped out of his mouth too easily, almost without control, but the times when he truly meant them had been becoming rarer and rarer these days.

"But come on," the teen resumed, starting to eat in turn. He winced slightly when chewing made the pain in the back of his head spike up a bit, but he forced himself to ignore the sensation. He wasn't going to show weakness in front of the space jerk. Especially not while he was trying to win a discussion. "Whom are you pranking? And why?"

Zim moved his eyes towards the crowd of the cafeteria, avoiding the human's gaze. His rival had the annoying habit of understanding immediately if he was lying, whether it was because he himself was a really _bad_ liar or because the other had some secret power he was still unaware of. Whichever was the reason, he didn't want to take the risk of being pressed too much for details. He always ended up slipping out something he shouldn't have.

"If you _must_ know, Dib-human, Zim is pranking…two fellow Irkens. They are former training mates of mine." It wasn't technically a lie. He was just omitting a few details. "They have dared to make fun of Zim since when we were just a bit more than smeets. I have decided to that it's time to shower them with a special kind of doom." His eyes lit up again, this time with dark determination. " _Humiliation_!"

On one side, Dib was a bit disappointed by hearing that there was no evil plan for him to stop this time. He had almost wished for one since he too needed to get some payback for all the times his nemesis had defeated him in the last two months. However, on the other hand, he still found himself interested in the whole affair. He wondered if Zim's sudden need to close accounts with his past had something to do with his therapy, but he didn't dare to ask, knowing that such a question would have led to the end of the conversation. So, instead, he swallowed another mouthful of food and watched as the Invader got carried away by his own words.

"Your people are a race of intergalactic _bullies_ , aren't they? Even with their own kind. And now you're here, planning revenge on your own bullies, while busy bullying a whole planet," he commented in the end, with a huff. "Isn't it a bit hypocritical?"

Zim squinted at him. "What are you even talking about, Dib-worm?!" He exclaimed, confused. "It's not bullying if the other creature is an inferior, smelly, insignificant bunch of… _meat_. You humans _beg_ to be conquered and wiped away by a superior race like mine! And if you're implying that I'm bullying _you_ , then you speak filthy _lies_. I'm trying to end you, stupid Earth ape. You're Zim's nemesis, not some random victim."

"If you say so," Dib mumbled, clearly disagreeing with everything the alien had just said. His attention, though, mostly focused on the last statement and he couldn't help recalling his conversation with Ms Xander of two days before, about what Zim might mean with the term "nemesis". He wondered if Irkens had a more comprehensive expression to sum up everything the word could imply, everything he and Zim were to each other. He had never noticed it before, but now he understood why woman had said that his rival spelled the term in a very peculiar way. There was something in his voice, in the emphasis he put on it, something that suggested hidden, obscure meanings. For once, he really felt as the Invader often defined him: too _human_ to understand the depths of the "superior" Irken mindset.

"And how are you going to…shower them with doom?" He asked, chasing those thoughts away. It was useless to linger on questions without answers, especially considering that the only being who might have had the replies refused to offer even the slightest clue. Perhaps he should have tried to figure it out on his own, since the feeling was mutual. That, though, wasn't the right time to do it.

"I sent them drugged snacks as a present." The Irken scoffed, as if it was obvious. "They will at least make fools of themselves in each other's eyes." He strongly doubted that it might have caused their ruling over Irk to be somehow damaged, but it would have given them a small taste of what being forced to constantly be face to face with someone you would have rather avoided meant. And if he was lucky and they had happened to eat those donuts in front of the whole Massive crew…Then his laughter would have echoed everywhere in the Galaxy. "Even if I wish all Irk could see them. But Zim will get to that. One day." If he wasn't sentenced to death and hunted down until he either died or disappeared first.

"I'm not sure I want to know what you put in those snacks," Dib commented, but there was a hint of a sly grin playing on his lips. He really didn't want to know, because he had seen the depths of the Invader's cruelty, had experienced it on his own skin and he _almost_ felt bad for those two aliens who were being targeted. However, he couldn't help finding the other's determined, slightly crazy expression somehow amusing. Perhaps he was out of his mind himself, for real, just as everyone said. He took a sip of his water. "You're really something, space boy."

Zim shot him a wary look. "What is that supposed to mean, Dib-beast?" He demanded, stance tensing and tone turning hostile for a moment.

The human shook his head at the reaction. At least that one was normal. Usual Irken paranoia. Not that his rival didn't have reason to believe that he talked behind his back. The alien had all the motives of the universe, just as he had all the causes of the world to believe that the Invader was plotting something nasty and _doomy_ behind his own shoulders. It was how things worked between them. Or at least, how they used to work. By now, while that element was still there, he had started to realise that there was much more to their relationship, even if _what_ exactly was still unclear.

"Easy, Zim. It's a compliment. Take it and shut up," he ended up saying with a shrug, once again completely unaffected by the intimidation hidden in the Irken's eyes. He could almost see them. Deep magenta pool, threatening to swallow the whole cosmos.

The Invader kept eyeing his rival for a few more moments, but then he decided to accept his words and pulled out his alien tablet again, holding it so that the human couldn't see the screen and resuming his reading. The teen rolled his eyes and bit back a sigh, deciding to focus on his lunch.

The silence stretched between them, maybe slightly awkward because they weren't used to share their space peacefully yet, but not unpleasant or heavy. From time to time, Dib's eyes flew from his food to Zim's face, taking in how deeply focused he looked and wondering when things had stopped being simple. Both for them and between them.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

"Did you invite the alien moron over?"

That was the question that greeted Dib as soon as he set a foot inside his house. He had just had two lessons in the afternoon, so he had finished fairly early that day and he was glad about it. He hadn't been getting much rest in the last two weeks, between tests, homework, personal projects and keeping an eye on Zim. Perhaps, for once, he would have managed to go to sleep at a decent hour. Or so he had thought before finding his sister waiting for him in the living room. Gaz had had no afternoon lessons, so she had gone home straight after lunch and he had expected her to be in her room, playing as per usual. The almost omnipresent console was in her hands, but she was downstairs and she wasn't comfortably sprawled on the couch. She was leaning against the seatback, her boots still on, in the same clothes she had been wearing at school. Ready to go out.

"Hey you too, Gaz," the older teen greeted, half sarcastic and half suspicious. He didn't know what he liked less, the fact that she had been waiting for him or the fact that she had inquired about Zim. "Why do you ask? You're the one who usually invites him over to kick his ass at some game."

The girl glared a little at his tone, but weirdly enough she didn't complain. "You're the one who had lunch with him today," she simply shot back, hitting the pause option on her game and crossing her arms on her chest. "So? Is he coming over or not?"

Dib rolled his eyes, but his sister had a point. If she had asked him that question two months before, he would have called her insane, but recently the Irken wasn't any longer a completely unwelcome presence in their household. Their father had even invited him over for dinner a few times, even if the Invader had declined for the obvious reason that he wouldn't have been able to eat the food without exposing himself for what he was. It was weird, thinking of how easily he now could picture the alien on his couch, and it would have probably never stopped feeling a bit out of place.

"I asked him if he wanted to come over, but he said that he's busy with the results of his latest plan," he admitted with a small sigh, walking past her to set down his bag in the kitchen and grab a glass of water. "He's become some sort of intergalactic prankster apparently."

Gaz followed him, game still paused, and raised an eyebrow. She seemed to be listening, which was probably just as weird as him and Zim playing a game together against her, even if she clarified almost immediately: "Feel free _not_ to tell me about it. I don't want to know."

He eyed her for a moment, almost warily, but then he shrugged. He already had his hands full with his nemesis's weird attitude and mood swings. He didn't want to deal with his sister's too. Besides, she was a _girl_ and she would have turned fourteen soon. He could safely explain her changes of demeanour with hormones and biology. With Zim, unfortunately, it wasn't that simple.

"I won't. I don't have much to tell anyway," he grumbled under his breath, downing his water. "He wasn't very forthcoming with details. But if he offers you food, don't eat it. It's most likely drugged."

Gaz's eyebrow lifted even more at those words, her expression shouting something on the lines of "I said that I don't want to know, you idiot", but then she didn't try to break his spine to shut him up, so he decided that he could safely assume that she wasn't too mad. Still, all he got for an answer after the look was silence and the fact made him realise that he had to be the one to question her for explanations.

"Uh, why did you ask? Do you need to go somewhere?" He offered after a moment of hesitation. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know what was going on.

The girl openly rolled her eyes at his lame attempt. The older teen was sounding more concerned than interested. At times she wondered how it was possible that they were siblings. They couldn't have been more different. And she had never been as dense as Dib was at times, not even as a baby.

"Yes, Dib. I'm taking you to the park," she answered firmly, making sure that her tone was adamant. It wasn't negotiable. "Put down your stuff, do what you need to do and let's go." She started to tap her foot on the floor. "Don't take forever. I don't have all day to waste waiting for you."

The older teen was very tempted to point out that he wasn't a dog and that he didn't need to be "taken out", but something in his sister's expression made him bite his tongue and nod. Then he picked up his bag again and quickly headed upstairs. She hadn't threatened him verbally, but she hadn't needed to. He had no doubts that an atrocious pain would have been waiting ahead for him if he had crossed or contradicted her orders.

Gaz watched him scurrying upstairs, disappearing from her sight, and then huffed. Her brother was an idiot and he made things even harder for her, especially in moments like the current one when, once in a life time, she had decided to try and be a decent sister. She couldn't understand how it was that he and Zim hadn't become friends yet, after all that time. They were perfect for each other. A match made in Moronsland. But perhaps they were too stupid to even see _that_.

She closed the console as she made her way out of the kitchen and grabbed her own shoulder bag from where she had left it in the couch. The last few weeks had been a bit of a rush, for her family. Skool was a pain in the ass for both her and Dib, since all the teachers seemed to have decided to have tests at the same time. Moreover, his brother still had to deal with his own bullying problem. Apparently, for the dumb jerks Louis's death hadn't been enough to understand that, perhaps, it was time to deal with their own shit and leave everyone else alone. Maybe she should ask Zim to dismember another of them, to see if they would have got the message the second time. How was that Latin saying her teacher always used? Ah, yes. _Repetita iuvant._ "Repeating does good". Still, she wasn't sure if it worked for lost causes too.

She let out another small huff. That wasn't all, _of course_. Dib was also stressing over the issue of their resident alien more than he normally did and, while she still thought that he was wasting his time, she could see where the worry came from. She couldn't deny that Zim acted weird most days and that he seemed to have finally remembered his training on how to conquer planets. The plans he came up with now were effective and even quite scary at times. She had been _impressed_ by the tale of a few of them, even if she would have never admitted it.

However, there was also the fact that Zim hadn't carried out any of them yet. Not for real. She agreed with Dib that there had to be a serious reason behind that choice, but, unlike her brother, she was pretty convinced that the Invader had, at least for the moment, given up on trying to take over the Earth. So, if Dib wanted and _needed_ to chase the other idiot around, it was fine with her. He shouldn't have, though, let Zim get under his skin so much, because that way her sibling played right into the alien's hand. The Irken might not be a real threat to Earth, because of his incompetence before and his unwillingness now, but he sure as hell wasn't the best thing for the older teen's mental sanity. She didn't want to be forced to get involved in their petty war, but she knew that it might have happened if they had kept going as they were now.

Her frown deepened. On the top of that, the latter period had been quite busy for their father too. The Professor had been working on a very complicated and important project during the last year and it had finally entered the last phase. That meant basically two things. First of all, the man was even less around than he usually was, since he stayed at the lab all day and slept there at night. Secondly, he had become even more intolerant to Dib's refusal to embrace "real science". That fact had led to the umpteenth vicious argument between her father and her brother the previous week, one that had almost made her want to march to Zim's base, grab the Irken by the antennae, drag him to her house and wave him under her parent's nose, just to let him know that his son wasn't insane.

Her lip twitched slightly at her line of thoughts. When they were kids, those fights happened much more frequently than they did now, but they never touched her. She used to be glad to have their father home and hated Dib because he was the cause of those long, stupid discussions that took up precious family time. It was also to be said that, back then, the Professor used to be more indulgent towards the boy's hobbies and that the worst that had happened had been for Dib to spend a few hours at the Crazy House for Boys. He had been sentenced to be locked up for life, but she hadn't worried. She knew that he would have got out, somehow. He always did. Besides, it had been _Halloween_ and the weirdest things happened during the celebration. Things that usually didn't last.

Now things had changed. While the number of the fights had decreased, they had got more serious and harsher. Membrane had made it clear that he wanted Dib to come and work with him, that it was what his son should have done since the start, but that wouldn't have been possible if the boy kept chasing literal and metaphorical ghosts. The "insane" comments, which before had always been accompanied by regretful, exasperated sighs, now were more cutting, more _final_ , like a life sentence. Dib acted as if he didn't see where that was going to end, or perhaps he was too absorbed in his own paranormal world to care for the real one, but Gaz wasn't and she saw it all. She had _always_ seen it all. What had changed was that she couldn't just go back to her videogames and ignore it anymore, no matter how much she wished she could.

"Dib! Hurry up, you lazy ass!" She called out aloud, her frown deepening again, more because of her own thoughts than because her brother was taking forever to get ready.

The day she had stood up for her sibling for the first time, over one year before, she had officially acknowledged the fact that she couldn't be a little girl anymore. Not that she had ever been, with no mother in the picture and an absent father. Both she and Dib had been forced to grow up and learn to fence for themselves far too soon. The Professor had always provided them with whatever they needed, at least _materially_ , but they had lived on their own from a very young age and that was bound to make you into an adult much before the time was right. She had always succeeded in pretending to ignore that fact, burying herself in her virtual worlds and being happy with scaring away everyone around her. And she would have kept going on like that, for who knows how long, if a stupid green alien hadn't landed on her planet.

She gritted her teeth, irritated. She hated to admit it, but the truth was that Zim had had a bigger impact on her life that she cared to acknowledge, even if mostly indirectly. She had never thought that her brother was completely insane. She had seen a few of his monsters herself. She had even taken selfies with Bigfoot. And she wasn't so stupid to think that humans were the only "intelligent" race in the universe. Also because, if that had been true, then said universe was as doomed and stupid as their race. Now that she had met the Irkens, though, she was even more persuaded that that the cosmos was doomed.

However, one thing was acknowledging that the boy had a point, in abstract, and another was seeing his point walking around her City every day and watching Dib fighting the Invader, for the sake of a world that had never given a damn about him. Gaz knew that humanity didn't give a damn about her either and she had chosen to reciprocate the feeling. Earth could have rotten and been destroyed for all she cared, as long as she could have kept living her own life. It was easier that way, it was selfish. Her idiotic brother, instead, had chosen to do the responsible thing and try to save everyone, even if all he got for it were insults and suffering.

Till a few years ago, she had thought that he was stupid and that had been the end of it. Now it wasn't anymore. She was older, she was more mature and she had met a few decent people. A girl who made wonderful rock things with her electric guitar. A guy who could beat her at her favourite game and who, instead of rubbing it in her face, had gifted her with a super special edition of Game Slaver, deeming her the only worthy opponent he had ever met. Her new martial art teacher, who was perhaps the most badass grown-up she knew and the only one able to kick her ass properly. They had shown her the potential of mankind for which her brother risked ruining his life every day and they had made her feel, despite herself, a reluctant _respect_ for her sibling's choices. She had also decided that Dib couldn't be the only one to do the responsible thing, because otherwise the world and its very well hidden potential would have had no hope of surviving. She had to do something too, at least from the side lines.

Her fingers pulled at the hem of her dress. It hadn't been easy, at first, admitting that indifference wouldn't have led her anywhere. Admitting that she had been living in her own little world just as she had often accused Dib of doing. Admitting that she was human and that, as such, she couldn't be an island all the time. Admitting that there was more to her sibling than a crazy kid with his head in the clouds. Admitting that there was something _worth_ in her eyes too, out there.

When she had finally decided that she was done pretending that none of that concerned her, she had stepped forward and beat up Dib's bullies, conscious that it meant acknowledging that her life wasn't made just of herself and her games and the idealised figure of her father. There was her brother too in there, a brother she had to protect from his own blindness. There was a stupid alien failing to take over the world and ending up saving it once in a while, a being who, under his overconfident idiocy, was perhaps more similar to the two of them than anyone liked to admit. There was her _real_ father, the man who loved his family but who clearly couldn't help them becoming strong people and who, for this reason, shouldn't have a saying in what they did with their lives. And then there was the outside world, ugly and dull and stupid, but which also possessed hidden spots of light for whoever looked hard enough. _That_ was her real life.

"I'm ready!" Dib's voice claimed as he jogged down the stairs, joining her. He hadn't bothered to change, but he had replaced the books in his bag with whatever he might have needed. Which meant that he had put in it a bit of everything, because with Gaz you could never know.

" _Finally_ ," the girl growled and then marched towards the door without waiting for an answer, forcing the scythe-haired boy to hurry after her. Even if she had had a change of heart about her priorities, it didn't mean that she had turned into a completely different person.

She didn't stop once she had crossed the threshold either, leaving to her sibling the task to lock up and then to run to join her. She could tell that he was vibrating with the need to ask her why they were going to the park, but that he didn't dare to because he was afraid of setting her off. _Good_. Dib's fear was something she never wanted to lose, also because it was a great part of what built his respect for her and, especially, his acknowledgement that she could do things that he wouldn't be able to do in his wildest dreams.

"I'm going to teach you how to fight," she offered after a few minutes of thick silence. She didn't look at him, didn't stop frowning, and ignored his surprised gasp. "Not enough to stop Zim from being able to kick your butt if he tries, because that's too much fun to watch, but maybe you'll stop getting slammed into the Skool lockers by every idiot who crosses your path. I can't have a wimp for a brother. I'm not always there to babysit your weak ass."

The older teen simply gaped at her, unable to hide his shock, and she rolled his eyes, annoyed. However, when, hours later, Dib, covered in bruises, dirt and sweat, still looked at her as if she had gone insane while they made their way back home, she had to fight back a pleased grin. Perhaps she had _really_ gone mad. It didn't really matter in that moment, though, because her brother was half-smiling too, when he wasn't wincing in pain. And she knew that now _she_ was the one doing the responsible thing for the world. In her own way.

* * *

Hey, everyone!

Sorry, I thought that I could have updated sooner but my schedule had got crazy, even if I had already started to write this chapter while I was trying to find the guts to publish the last one! ^^" Uh, speaking of the last chapter, as first think, I want to thank you all for having been so _**awesome** _about it! You've been so supporting and that really helped me. Honestly, when I started to publish this story, I wasn't expected that I would have got actually dedicated readers, so you having stuck with me so far is a little miracle in my eyes. I'm so glad that I've been able to bring you enough enjoyment and entertainment to have you stick around! Seeing your comments and all the other forms of support totally makes my day.

That said (because it was needed to be said first), back to the chapter! Sorry guys, no prank yet, but I promise that it _will_ happen in the next one. I know that you have a lot of expectations for it, so...I really hope that you'll like the way in which I decided to play it out ^^"  
Aside from that, this is mostly a transition chapter. I exploited the chance to write a happier Zim for once (which was long overdue, I know) and, especially, to write down a bit how exactly Dib's and Gaz's life has evolved in the previous four years. I chose Gaz's POV since we have plenty of Dib's and also because I hoped that this piece will help giving a more comprehensive view of the changes her character has undergone in my timeline. Also because I'll need it for later chapters!  
I hope you have enjoyed it!

I've done it already, but I want to briefly renew again my "thank yous" to you all! I'm so glad I have this small but dedicated audience. You're really precious to me, guys! My reviewers in the first place but everyone else too!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	21. Chapter 21

_On the Massive…_

Purple glared hard at the planet around which the flagship of the Irken Armada was orbiting in the moment, wishing that scowling at it would have been enough to make that stupid ball of soil _explode._ Well, perhaps not really explode, but burn a little bit, so that it could feel how much he despised it. And so that Red, who was currently planet-side, could be aware of how much he disliked _him_ in that moment too. Even if the jerk most likely knew already. His companion had left him on the ship, to take care of some boring useless bureaucracy, while he had teleported down to have some fun supervising the production and kicking some asses just for sport in the meanwhile. It was so _unfair._ Purple was ready to bet that his co-ruler had rigged the coin they had used to choose who would have taken care of which task. It wouldn't have been the first time.

The Tallest scoffed. If Red thought that he would have really worked on those delivery orders and requests, he was very, _very_ wrong. He had dumped them all in his companion's private chamber as soon as the other had left the Massive, without even going through them. His co-ruler would have had a lot to keep himself occupied, once he would have got back. Purple might have decided to help out, in exchange for Red's whole ration of night snacks. _Maybe._

Shaking his head, he turned his back to the window and wandered towards the centre of the room, once again ignoring the package that had been delivered to him a few minutes before. He hadn't even checked where it had come from, because he was utterly persuaded that it could be nothing but more work. It was all he had been handed over since they had reached that stellar system. He refused to accept more, even if he wasn't getting any done.

His antennae lowered slightly. On the other hand, though, he had to admit that he was _bored_. Usually, he and Red entertained each other and they hardly separated for more than a couple of hours. That time, instead, it had already been _four._ It might have sounded stupid, because Irken soldiers and Invaders often spent weeks and months, and more rarely a few years, stranded on foreign planets all on their own. They were trained to consider that kind of conditions normal and Purple himself, before becoming Tallest, had been assigned some missions during which he had spent a long amount of time alone.

That, however, had happened several rotations before, not much after he had met his future co-ruler for the very first time. In fact, almost since the start of their training to become members of the Irken Elite, they had quickly become physically inseparable. And the taller they grew, matching each other inch by inch, the more they had got accustomed to the idea that they would have always stood side by side. Becoming Tallest together, a fact that was _almost_ unheard of, had just confirmed that suspicion. So, no matter how much of a jerk Red could be at times, Purple never felt completely at ease when his companion wasn't with him. Of course, he had never voiced those thoughts to the other, or to anyone else for the matter, because he knew that all he would have got out of it would have been more mocking. Still, it was true and he couldn't wait for the other leader to get back.

"My Tallest?" A voice coming from the main computer console echoed in the room, interrupting his sulking. "May I disturb you?"

Purple was tempted to tell the Irken on the screen that he could not, but in the end he decided that a distraction could be good for him. He needed to pass his time somehow while he waited for Red, after all. "What is it?" He inquired in a slightly irritated voice.

The smaller alien winced at his tone and curled his shoulders up a bit, as if he was trying to make himself even tinier. "Uh, there's an incoming transmission for you, sir," he answered with a hint of hesitation. He knew very well that his leader wouldn't have been pleased about what he was about to add next. "It's…It's from Earth, my Tallest."

" _Earth_?" The alien leader repeated in a groan. _Zim_. A wave of repulsion and annoyance washed over him, chasing away the hint of amusement he had felt at the sight of the Navigator shivering in fear of his wrath. No way that he would have dealt with the Defective on his own. Having to bear him while Red was present was hard enough, even if it could be fun too, and he refused to go through that torture on his own. "Tell him I'm busy. Or something like that. Or just pretend that the transmission has been cut off. Find whatever excuse you want, but do _not_ put him through."

"But…But, my Tallest," the shorter Irken stuttered again, his voice becoming slightly more high-pitched. He hated his job in that moment and he hated the Invader on the other side of the line even more. "He said that it's…quite _urgent_."

Purple narrowed an eye at those words, his expression turning thoughtful for a moment. Urgent? What was that supposed to me? Was Zim in troubles? Or had he somehow managed to complete his task? He almost laughed out aloud at the latter thought. It couldn't be possible. The moron had never achieved anything if not the wrong things in his existence. However, could there be the smallest chance that the Defective had brought on that insignificant faraway planet, by accident, the same destruction he had rained over Irk during Operation Impending Doom I? _That_ didn't sound completely absurd. He had better check, just to be sure. He could have always cut the communication short, if it had turned out to be nothing of interest.

"Fine, put him through," he ordered, waving a hand towards the technician, who was very glad to follow the command and disappear from his sight.

The Irken leader crossed his arms on his chest and blinked at the now black screen until it lit up again, showing him the image of an openly smirking Zim. His first impulse was to roll his eyes, but something in the Invader's expression prevented him from doing so and, instead, pushed him to study the other more carefully. There was a slightly crazy light in his magenta orbs and his posture was at the same time relaxed and proud, the dim lights of his lab enhancing the hint of mischief that twisted his features. Purple felt a spark of worry. _Uh-oh._ The little pest was up to something and he didn't really want to know what it was.

"Hello, my Tallest!" The shorter Irken greeted, cheerfully, his smirk turning into a more pleasant grin for a second, before going back to the disquieting expression he had been wearing when the transmission had been put through. He then seemed to realise that something was amiss because he blinked and glanced around as much as the screen allowed him.

The Tallest took a moment to grasp what Zim had to be looking for. The idiot had noticed that his co-ruler was nowhere in sight. "It's just me, Zim. Red isn't on the Massive at the moment," he informed him, not because he cared to, but because all the twisting the Invader had started to do in front of him, as if he was trying to look at the whole room even if it wasn't possible, was a bit disturbing.

"Oh," Zim let out, stopping mid-gesture, and moved his face backwards. He looked disappointed for a long moment, but then he forced his grin back, even if it had lost a bit of the dark enthusiasm it had been conveying. "It's a shame, but it's fine. It will do anyway."

Now Purple was truly starting to get concerned. That was the second time that the smaller Irken called while being in some sort of altered state, or at least that was his guess about what was going on. That considered, the fear that it could have led to harm for the Empire, and for the personas of its leaders, was a reasonable feeling to experience.

"What is it, Zim? Why are you calling us?" He demanded, wanting to have a clearer grasp of the situation and quickly. He didn't have the same patience that Red showed towards the Invader's shenanigans and weird attitude. If the tiny pest didn't want him to close the transmission in his ugly face, he had better start talking _now_. "And why did you say that it was _urgent_?"

The smirk on Zim's face turned into a sheepish grin. "Oh, I said that because I wanted to be sure that you would answer, my Tallest," he admitted, rubbing the back of his head, but then he quickly went on, not giving the other the time to react. "But anyway! It was worth it. You see, since I haven't called you in over two months and Earth is still an… _ongoing_ project, I decided to send you a gift. To show you how much I appreciate the trust you're putting in Zim." For less than a second his face contorted, almost as if he had been wincing, in pain or disgust, but the look was so quick to come and go that it might as well have never been there. The moment after, in fact, he was once again busy trying to look around the room. "Did you receive my package?"

The Irken leader squinted at the Invader for a moment, confused by the abrupt and brief shift in his features, but then he dismissed it with a shrug, focusing on the only thing in the other's words that had captured his interest. The _gift_. He didn't know if he should interpret the word for what it seemed to mean or if he should be expecting a threat.

"Two months? Has it been that long? I hadn't realised," he commented dismissively as he turned around to grab the package he had been delivered earlier. In truth, he had noticed that the smaller alien hadn't called in for a while and he had almost come to hope that he had disintegrated himself. Or that he had caught some nasty illness that was keeping him too busy to call. Or that he had been captured by the humans. Or that he had irreparably destroyed his communication systems. So, that something had happened to make him unable to call them ever again. Vain hopes, unfortunately, because getting rid of the Defective wasn't that easy. "Gift you said? Wait a moment."

While he was lost in his thought and with his back to the screen, the expression on Zim's face shifted once again. His eyes grew darker, his smirk turned into a grimace. He had almost choked on his words when he had spoken about the "trust" that his leaders supposedly had in him. An ugly, filthy lie they thought he still believed. And there Purple was, treating him like an idiot once again. He was so disappointed that Red wasn't there and that the Tallest was in his private chamber. That way his prank wouldn't have been anywhere near as effective as he had hoped. Leave it to his bad luck to catch the Tallest in the only moment when they weren't together.

His mind raced for a moment. Perhaps he should have dragged the conversation on as long as possible, to at least make sure that the other ruler would have been on his way back by the time the one in front of him had started to feel the effects of his "gift". He also toyed with the idea of staying himself long enough to see the first signs, but he quickly discarded it. As much as he wanted to witness the humiliation, the thought of watching Purple doing what he had done to himself after ingesting GIR's waffles was a bit disturbing. His best bet was to hope that Red would have got back soon.

When the Irken leader turned around again, package in hands, Zim's features had gone back to show the wide smirk the latter had been sporting when he had looked away and the he shorter Irken's eyes even lit up in recognition, at the sight the container. There was no trace of the anger and the bitterness that had coloured his magenta orbs for a few seconds. If something, there was a deeper hint of satisfaction in his expression. He had asked the Computer to calculate how long the sweets would have taken to get to the Massive, so that he could time the call for when they would have been there and make sure that his Tallest ate them, instead of throwing them away.

"Is this from you?" Purple questioned, sounding sceptical. Even if he was oblivious to what was going on in the Invader's mind, he still moved his gaze between the screen and the object in his hands, looking as if he was expecting one of the two things to explode any moment now.

"Yes, my Tallest," Zim answered, with the most innocent, creepiest tone he managed, tilting his head on one side, his voice sounding eager and excited. "Aren't you going to open it? Uh? Zim swears that you'll _love_ it."

The Irken leader eyed him warily once again, purple eyes lingering on the now _sweet_ grin that had opened on the Invader's face. "Zim, you're really creepy, you know that?" He pointed out, but finally started to open the package. He still felt suspicious, but he had the feeling that the tiny pest would have kept bothering him if he hadn't at least taken a look at the "gift". And he wanted those wide, disturbingly greedy orbs off him. He just hoped that this "present" didn't turn out to be something lethal. How he wished that Red was there. He would have left the task to find out to him.

"That I am. Thank you, my Tallest," the shorter alien replied smoothly, raising his chin a bit. He now knew that the word was used as an insult, but he still decided to take it as a compliment. After all, he had worked hard on his expressions as a smeet, to make them as creepy as possible.

Purple chose to ignore him and, instead, he put all his focus on opening the package. He was extra careful not to do it too quickly and to keep it as far as possible from his face when he finally lifted the lid. However, nothing came out of it in a rush. No weird creature, no alive substance, no poisonous gas. Nothing moved either. So, after a moment, he cracked open one of the eyes he had closed, waiting for the worst, and dared to peer inside. The biggest container was filled with smaller paper bags, each of them looking perfectly safe and innocent. He studied them hesitantly for a moment, but in the end he persuaded himself to pull one out and open it.

"Donuts?" He stated, blinking almost in confusion. That was the last thing he had expected to see. Zim had sent them _snacks_. And they smelt good too. He narrowed his eyes. Where was the catch? A suspicion crawled in his mind, making him raise his gaze towards the smaller Irken once again. "They're made with Earth things, aren't they? Are you sure they're _edible_?"

The Invader looked almost offended at the insinuation. "Of course they are. I tested them on myself before sending them," he claimed with force, frowning and crossing his arms over his chest. It was the truth, after all. Then his eyelids fell slightly down, covering half of his magenta orbs, while his mouth remained a flat line. "I would never dare to do something that could put you in any kind of danger. You are Zim's Tallest."

The last sentence, together with the new level of creepiness in the other's expression, sent a small shiver down the Irken leader's spine, but he forced himself to ignore it. Zim was out of his faulty head, it was undeniable, but he was _extremely_ devoted to him and Red. So much that it hurt him, and even them, at times. That wasn't an assurance that he would have never accidentally poisoned them, but if he said that he had tested the sweets on himself, Purple believed him. And the Invader looked fine and healthy, so they had to be safe to eat. No guarantee for the taste, though.

"They've better be good, Zim," he simply said, squinting at him for one more moment. Then he pulled out the first donut, tearing a big mouthful away from in, and instantly became too interested in how nice the flavour was to notice the greedy satisfaction that had filled the shorter Irken's expression in the same moment when his teeth had sunk into the snack.

Zim watched eagerly as Purple wolfed down the half of contents of the paper bag, hardly keeping himself from raising his hands and shouting "Victory for Zim!". Sweet, _sweet_ revenge. And how appropriated those words were, considering the situation. It had been so _easy_. He had to admit that the Computer's idea had been truly brilliant, even more than he had initially thought. He should have had it himself, but at the time he had been too busy being scandalised by the side effects of the cinnamon spice.

"Are my sweets suitable to your liking, my Tallest?" He asked innocently, hands behind his back, once his leader had slowed down his eating. He leant forward expectantly, as he had done many times before, waiting for a praise that would have never come. Now, though, his eyes were greedily scanning the other not for a sign of appreciation, but for any sort of initial symptom. He had made sure to be abundant with his "secret ingredient" and he had made plenty of donuts for both Tallest, even if most likely Red would have ended up not even tasting them, if he came back and found Purple completely gone. A real pity. Even if the thought made him want to laugh madly anyway.

The Irken leader pondered his words for a moment before answering. "Not bad, for non-Irken food. You might have done something good for once," he conceded, but his tone was so condescending that even the half-compliment he had granted sounded insulting. He then waved his free hand, dismissively. "If this is all, you can go. Goodbye, Zim."

Zim's face contracted for a moment at those words, but he forced himself to keep grinning. "Of course I did. I am _ZIM_!" He claimed with a confidence he wasn't feeling. Then he made himself bow, despite the reluctance he was feeling. "Goodbye, my Tallest. _Enjoy_ your snacks."

The emphasis on the first word of the Invader's last sentence made Purple look at him once again, and very attentively. Odd. Everything around him seemed sharper now. And that was when he truly noticed. "Zim, wait a moment," he found himself calling out, before he could stop the words.

"Yes, my Tallest?" The shorter Irken answered, sounding hesitant for the first time since the call had started. A hint of nervousness blossomed in his chest. Had he said or done something he shouldn't have? Had he given himself away?

The Tallest blinked, trying to clear his head. He felt a bit weird. Why had he stopped the moron? Oh, yeah, now he remembered _._ "Are you…Zim, have you grown _taller_?" He questioned, sounding disturbed. The "again" went unsaid. He and Red had noticed a couple of years ago that the Defective had gained an inch or so, but now either his eyes were playing tricks on him or the Invader had grown at least _four_ inches taller compared to how he had been when he had last called them. He honestly hoped that it was the first thing. The second was something they could _not_ have.

It was Zim's turn to blink, in confusion. The question had caught him completely off guard. Him? _Taller_? It sounded like a bad joke and he opened his mouth to say so, but then, suddenly, he was reminded of how a lot of things had seemed _shorter_ all of a sudden. His chair in Ms Xander's office and his desk in class. His locker. The consoles in his lab. His clothes, although he had blamed GIR's inability to wash them for that one. Skoodge had asked him if he had got taller too, the first time he had contacted him, over a month before. And the Dib didn't tower over him as much as he used to. His eyes widened. How had he been so _stupid_?! Things hadn't got smaller. _He_ had grown up.

"I…Uh," he stuttered, shocked by the revelation. He looked down at himself for a moment. "I think so, my Tallest." He frowned. "I knew there was something weird going on."

Purple gaped at him. How had Zim missed such a development? No Irken would have neglected to notice an increase in their height, no matter how Defective they might be. The Invader was really dumber than he had thought. "Well, congratulations," he commented, spitting out the words as if they were something disgusting that had accidentally ended up in his mouth. "Goodbye." And he hit the button to end the transmission before the other could answer. " _Weirdo_."

Shaking his head, he dragged himself to the couch, taking the package of donuts with him. He didn't know if he should laugh at Zim's stupidity or be worried about his sudden growth sprout. He pulled out another snack. Perhaps he could do both. Once Red had come back from his trip, though, because now he wanted to enjoy his newly acquired sweets. He let his head fall on the edge of the seatback, rubbing a distracted claw on his forehead. When had the room got warmer?

 _Zim's base, Earth…_

Zim couldn't even bring himself to be mad for having had the call closed in his face before he could react. He was still too astonished by his epiphany and he didn't care about the fact that Purple was now probably laughing at his show of idiocy. Assuming that he would have been still able to think clearly with all the cinnamon he would have been soon consuming. The thought made the victorious smirk he had been carrying around all day blossom back on his face. He had _two_ reasons to be celebrating now.

"He won't know what hit him until it's too late!" He exclaimed loudly, his voice booming in the silence of his lab, followed by the eerie echo of an evil laughter. Next to him, GIR was rolling on the floor, laughing in turn, happy to see his master so energetic and full of enthusiasm as he hadn't been in a long while.

The Invader felt exhilarated as he had never been before. Not only he had managed to get a small payback on the representative of the planet that had ridiculed him all his life, but he had been blessed with more height. He might be a Defective, but apparently that wasn't preventing him from getting the power he deserved. And the face that Purple had made when he had realised that he had grown. He would have never forgotten it, especially once he would have been given the chance to rub the fact in his and Red's face, after his official banishment.

For once the thought of his exile didn't dampen his mood and he kept smirking widely, not caring if his face hurt for the stretch. Nothing could have destroyed his high spirits that night. No matter what kind of defeat or bad news he might have received. No matter how hurt he could have got. For the first time since he had found out the truth, he felt completely like himself again. The void in his chest was still there of course, because no number of gained inches could have filled it, not even if he had, absurdly, become Tallest himself, but he could pretend that it wasn't there, to the point of not acknowledging it, at least for the moment. It was a liberating feeling. It made him feel _lighter_.

"Computer!" He called, clapping his hands. "I want the whole base refitted to Zim's new mighty height! I'm _taller_ now! I have to live up to what that implies!" He then turned towards his robot. "As for us, GIR, let's go and see this ozone hole of doom!"

The SIR Unit let out a cheering screech and jumped on the alien, who, for once, caught him and held him in his arm, instead of dumping him on the floor as he usually did. GIR was much smaller too now, compared to him. His grin widened even more as he carried his overexcited sidekick out of the lab, taking the elevator to the roof and ignoring the blows and the kicks that the robot, in his happy agitation, was throwing at his skull. He was ready to face everything.

Down in the laboratory, the Computer was left to sigh, wishing, this time, that it had hands and a face, so that it could have facepalmed. It had been wondering why the Irken hadn't boasted yet about his newly achieved height and now it knew that it was simply because its master hadn't even realised that he had grown taller. How embarrassing. Not that the Invader cared. He was too elated by the discovery.

The machine scoffed. It had been ready to tell Zim _why_ he had undergone this grow sprout, but the other had rushed off before it could even start, to go making new surveys of the Earthen atmosphere. The explanation would have had to wait. Better this way, perhaps. The alien would have been able to appreciate the irony of it once he would have been calmer, considering that he had to thank for his gained inches, on one hand, the planet he despised so much and, on the other, the same revelation that had devastated his life.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

 _On the Massive…_

Red made his way through the crowd of cheering Irkens who had come to welcome him back on board. He rolled his eyes, but offered them his best showman grin, before ordering them to go back to their posts if they didn't want to be shot with the cannons during the next Organic Sweep. The sweet tone he had used left his audience confused for a moment, but eventually the threat sunk in and they all scurried away, stumbling on their feet and colliding into each other in the hurry, expressions of pure terror blossoming on their faces.

He snickered to himself, dumping the disks with the information he had collected in the waiting arms of the Irken who had accompanied him planet-side, and then headed off to look for Purple. He was almost sure that he would have found his co-ruler sulking in their shared chambers. The other had looked incredibly unhappy when he had realised that he had lost the coin flip, not that it could have ended in any other way since the coin was rigged, and Red knew that he would have had to deal with him moping for some time now. And most likely with all the work his companion _hadn't_ done while he was away.

The thought made him roll his eyes again, in exasperation, but he was used to having most of the responsibilities of the Empire on his shoulders. Purple wasn't exactly much of a leader when it came to anything that wasn't snacking, destroying planets and having fun at others' expenses. That had never been news to him, though. He had been aware what he would have been forced to deal with when they _both_ had been proclaimed Tallest. They had known each other since when they had been just out of smeethood. However, it still annoyed him because he knew that his companion was as capable as he was. Purple just chose not to care of the most boring parts of their duties whenever it wasn't strictly necessary, meaning whenever he could dump all the work on _him_.

He had to walk past the guards set in front of the main entrance to their lodgings and then past another additional door before finding his co-ruler. The sight was more or less the one he had been expecting. The other was sprawled on the couch, empty paper bags spread all around him, munching on a donut. There was no sign of the documents Purple should have been going through, but Red was ready to bet that he would have found them in his own private room, untouched. The only weird thing in the picture was that his companion hadn't jumped on his feet to greet him, as he did every time they separated. He seemed not to have noticed his presence at all and kept staring at the void in front of him, brows furrowed in apparent concentration.

Red stared at him in silence, to see if he was acknowledged, but he had to give up after one whole minute and no reaction. "Uh, Purple? I'm back," he called, biting back a deep sigh.

Purple started at the sound of his companion's voice. He had almost forgotten that the other was supposed to come back. He had forgotten almost everything, if he had to be honest, aside from the warmth, the tingling sensation on his skin and the donuts he had been ingesting, in the last…How long had it been? Hours? Days? He turned his head and squinted in the direction of the main console. Half an hour? _Impossible_. More time had to have passed. He had closed the transmission with Zim _ages_ before.

"Purple?" The other Tallest tried again, since no real answer had followed his previous attempt to catch his companion's attention. He was starting to get a bit worried. Was his co-ruler _that_ upset about having been left on the ship? "Come on, you can't be mad about…"

"Oh, Red! You're back. Finally, you've been gone forever!" The purple-eyed Irken leader exclaimed in that moment, realising that he had never replied to the greeting. He had meant to, but he had got distracted by the time. He then shifted in his spot, uncomfortable. "Isn't this room _hot_?"

Red raised a brow slightly. "The temperature is the usual," he stated flatly, a bit puzzled by the odd attitude he was witnessing. "Are you alright?"

The other Tallest made a face. How could his companion not feel the heat, when he was almost sweating by now? At first, he hadn't really noticed it himself, but then the air had started to grow warmer and warmer and now it reminded him of those desert planets they used to be sent to for the survival training sessions.

"Yeah, it's just…warm." He waved a hand and patted the spot next to him on the couch, before fishing another donut. "So, did you have fun down there while I was here, bored to death? I was about to start considering blowing up the planet at some point."

"I'm glad you didn't, since I was _there_. Thanks for the thought," the red-eyed leader commented, sarcastically, but took a seat next to his companion anyway, pushing aside some of the paper bags. "And you wouldn't have been bored to death, if you had done what you were supposed to do." He received just a shrug at his words, so he went on. He would have rubbed in the other's face all the cool weapons he had seen and especially _tested_ , as a payback for all the reports his co-ruler had left for him. "Anyway. I had an interesting time, instead…"

Purple listened more or less to the first three sentences that Red spoke after that, his attention being quickly stolen away. At first his mind locked on the still growing heat in his body and he kept shifting slightly, pushing away the empty bags, fingers clenching and unclenching to fight the tingling of his skin. However his focus moved elsewhere soon enough and this time it landed on the Irken sat next to him. The other's image, just as the everything else around him, looked sharper and fuzzier at the same time, which made it hard for him to focus on the full picture and drew his attention to the details.

He blinked slowly. He had never noticed how _expressive_ his co-ruler's gesturing was when he spoke. The other made these wide movements with his hands, drawing weird shapes in the air, and he found himself being fascinated by them for a moment. He had no idea of what Red was saying, but he could tell that he was describing something big and complicated and that he was enthusiastic about it. His voice betrayed that too. Purple's antennae perked up slightly. It was a really nice voice. Especially the way it sounded when his companion was as self-absorbed in his own speeches as he was now. Even if Red missed a few terms at times, _basic_ words, his voice still made up for it. At least in part. But the best thing, for what he could see now, were his eyes. Oh _Irk_ , those eyes. There were plenty of Irkens with red or magenta eyes, but Red's were of a shade all of their own. They were darker than most, more intense, like certain rare rocks, which stood out against the normal landscape on the surface of their home world.

He shook his head slightly, trying to clear his mind, but he found that he couldn't stop staring, frozen in his spot, snacks forgotten too. Why was he noticing those things just now? And how was it that he had never realised how much he _liked_ them? He had to be as dumb as Zim to have missed those little but wonderful details. Or maybe the heat was starting to melt his brain.

"Purple? _Purple_! Are you listening to me?" Red's voice cut though his dazed thoughts, sounding like the other had been trying to get his attention for a while. When he blinked at him, he saw him frowning with something close to concern. "Are you sure you're alright?"

Purple scoffed, or at least tried to, because the noise that left his lips sounded more like a groan. "I told you, Red. I'm good. Just…hot," he answered, rubbing his free hand against his temple. In that moment he remembered that he was still holding an unfinished donut and took another bite. "And I was listening. More or less. But, Red, you know what?"

The other Tallest stared at him for one more moment. Something was definitely off. He picked up one of the empty paper bags. Where had his co-ruler got those snacks? The emblem of the Empire wasn't anywhere in sight and that was odd, because everything produced in Irken territory was marked with it. "What?" He asked distractedly, studying the bag.

Purple hesitated for a moment. There was a part of him that was insisting that he should shut up, because he shouldn't speak the words what he was about to say, _ever_ , but he couldn't bring himself to listen to common sense. It was like an itch he needed to scratch, just like the impulse he had to reach out for his antennae. That was another instinct that was becoming hard to control.

"Have I ever told you that I like your eyes? Like really, _really_ like them?" He blurted out, lifting his claws towards his companion's face and leaning forward. "I'd really like to tear them out and have a closer look, but they look best where they are now, so I don't want to do it."

Red gaped at the words he was offered, but recovered quickly, jerking back, to put his eyes out of arm's reach. He was pretty sure that the other leader wouldn't have tried to take them out for real, but it was becoming clear that the purple-eyed alien wasn't himself in that moment. It wasn't a risk that he wanted to take.

"What are you even saying!" He exclaimed incredulous and then waved the empty bag he was holding in his co-ruler's face, slapping the other's hand away too in the process. He was starting to get an idea of what was going and he didn't like it. "Stop this creepy talking and answer me. Where did you get these?"

Purple gulped down the last bit of his donut and then, reluctantly, dropped his eyes from his companion's and moved them on what he was being showed. "The snacks you mean? Oh, Zim sent them," he answered, blindly reaching for another full bag. "He called while you were away. Said he had made a present for us and it turned out that he baked us these." He handed out the donut he had managed to fish. "He used Earth stuff, but he tested it on himself first, so it's not lethal. And they are really _good_. You should try one."

" _ZIM_?!" Red echoed, appalled. His suspicions were correct. The sweets were the cause of his co-ruler's stranger behaviour. Who knew what that Defective menace could have slipped in the food, more or less accidentally. "Why on Irk are you eating something _he_ sent? Have you forgotten what happened to Spork and Miyuki?!" He grabbed the other's gauntlet to prevent him from biting down on the snack he was holding. "He _poisoned_ you. Pur…"

"I don't feel poisoned, Red," the other Tallest cut him off. "I just feel very _warm_." He didn't feel sick. At all. The heat was uncomfortable, but the tingling was nice, even if it left him feeling unsatisfied. It was a bit better now, though, with his companion's arm brushing his fingers. "But it's a very _nice_ warm." He shook his arm out of the other's claws and grabbed them with his own. "And did you just call me Pur? I like it. You should do it more often."

"I didn't…" Red started, but then decided to let it slip. His co-ruler was far too gone to understand that he hadn't called him with a nickname, but that he had just been cut off half-way while spelling his name. Better stick to the important facts. "Fine, you're not poisoned. But you're _drugged_."

Purple seemed to consider the idea for a moment. It was hard to think when your head felt like it was filled with thick _treacle_. "Yeah, I guess you're right. It's all nice and my skin is tingly, but perhaps it's a bit too hot." He frowned, letting go of his companion's fingers. "And my antennae feel _really_ weird…"

That was maybe the thing that disturbed him the most. He had been trying to ignore them since he had started to experience the warmth, but the feeling was getting unbearable. In a sudden surge of irritation and another emotion he couldn't define, he reached out to wrap his claws around the offending appendages. "It's so annoying and…"

The rest of his words got stuck on his throat as soon as his fingers closed around their targets, sending a strong, intense shiver down along the whole length of his spine and causing a low, deep sound to escape his mouth instead. His head fell forward a bit, as to instinctively make the antennae more accessible for him to touch, and he shuddered. His face was _burning_ now.

"That…That felt good," he stuttered, torn between incredulity, pleasure and awkwardness.

Red bolted backwards as soon as the weird sound left his co-ruler's lips, shocked and scandalised. What on Irk was… _that_? He didn't even have a word to define it, but he knew that it had made him incredibly uncomfortable, together with the sight of Purple stroking his antennae. There was something terribly _wrong_ in the whole situation and he didn't want to be there a minute longer, not while the other was under the effect of that mysterious alien drug. And yet, for some reason, the sight of the purplish tint on the other Tallest's cheeks made him feel a bit warmer too, in a pleasant, confusing way. The hue fitted just so well the colour of those half-lidded orbs locked on him. He hoped that, whatever the other had ingested, wasn't _contagious_ or he was doomed.

"I…I…I'll come back later. When you are…not drugged anymore," he managed to stutter out, jumping on his feet and grabbing the package with the remaining donuts. He mentally cursed. His companion had eaten half of its contents already. He would have been in that state for quite some time. He was going to murder Zim. _Painfully._ "And these go out of an airlock!"

The purple-eyed Irken let out an unhappy sound as he saw himself deprived of his stash of donuts. "Aw, but _Red_! They are _my_ snacks! And I _like_ them!" He protested, trying to reach out for both his co-ruler and the sweets, but found that he couldn't really get up and the other was already several steps away. "Come on, don't take them away. And don't leave!"

"There's something that really messes with your PAK in here, Purple," Red shot back firmly, moving backwards again till he reached the door. "Stay here, do…do whatever you need to do about the…annoying _tingling_ and I'll check on you later. I mean it. Stay here." And without waiting for answer he obviously _fled_ the room, locking the door behind his back.

Purple let out a disgruntled groan and crossed his arms on his chest, a gloomy expression on his face. That had been a really mean move. His companion had just got back and now he had gone off again, with _his_ snacks, just because Zim had put something odd in them. It was unfair. The anger, however, didn't last long, because his hands soon wandered back up to stroke his antennae and he felt his body slumping back against the couch, as a warm contentment filled him. The sensation was still weird, but he couldn't bring himself to care because he had experienced very few things that made him feel so good. Despite the oddness, it was incredibly relaxing. Almost better than most of the snacks he had tried in his life. _Almost._

"Whatever. I'll just ask Zim to send more donuts. Without the drug thing. Even if I also want to find a way to get back at that pest for…whatever this is," he told himself quietly. A sigh escaped his lips then, carrying a hint of melancholic longing. "It's odd. I'm really wishing that Red had stayed. It would have all been better if he had…"

* * *

So, chapter 21, aka "The Prank".

This took longer than I expected (because stuff came up and I apologise for the delay!) and it came out way sillier than I had intended for it to be 0.0 I know that a lot of people had expectations for this chapter and I honestly hope that I haven't disappointed anyone! D: Because that would be terrible. I guess that I was trying to make this fun, before anything else, but purposeful humour isn't my forte ^^"

There are still a lot of things I want to happen before Zim's official banishment, so I had his bad luck do some damage control (there will be consequences, of course, but not disastrous one. Well, that's not exactly true, but you'll see? ^^"). And I also figured out that there would have been no way that the Tallest would have eaten snacks that had popped out of nowhere. Not to mention that Zim, in his rush of getting his prank done, wouldn't have thought it through too much. Besides, I can of love writing Zim and Purple's interaction. For how I see it, they just can't stand each other and *that* was Purple's ruin. He dismissed Zim and his odd behaviours too quickly.  
Also, for whoever has been wondering why Zim hadn't acknowledge his gained height yet...Here's the answer!

You guys will let me know what you think about it! I'm very eager (and VERY nervous) to hear your opinions! For the next one, I plan to switch genre and go for an action chapter, which surely will come out much better (or so I hope).

Enough of my crap. Thanks to all the people who are still reading this story! I'm going to repeat myself, but I'm as surprised as I am grateful for the interest and the feedback I'm getting for this! It really keeps me writing. And I really want to do it, since we have officially reached, with this chapter, the half of the first arc ^^" Honestly, when I started to plan this story out, I had no idea that it would have got so long, but having people showing interest really inspired me in writing more and adding more stuff and so...I guess this became much bigger than I planned for it to be. And I owe it too you all too. So, thank you by heart to all the readers, but, as always, the most special thanks go to my reviewers. Reading your thoughts always inspires me. To do more and to do better too, as much as it's possible. This story wouldn't be the same without your input!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	22. Chapter 22

The low alarm echoed in the silence of the night. It was just a bit more than a strong vibration, set to be loud enough to wake up the occupant of the room, but not to disturb the girl who slept on the other side of the corridor. Dib had found out the hard way what happened when you interrupted Gaz's sleep without a good reason, and he had also learnt, always in the hard way, that there was no reason good enough to excuse such a thing.

The teen blindly reached out for the device, managing to turn it off but also knocking his glasses on the floor in the process. He let out a disgruntled noise and rolled on his side, leaning past the border of the mattress to retrieve his lenses. His mind was starting to wake up, even if slowly, and his brain was finally catching up with the meaning of the alarm that had just gone off.

In the last week, his instrumentation had picked up several alien signatures in the highest levels of the Earth atmosphere. It hadn't taken him much to verify that it was Zim's Voot Cruiser moving from spot to spot all around the planet. The activity was definitely suspicious, but the alien seemed to never stay in the same place for more than twenty minutes at most, so the teen had never managed to intercept him. Moreover, during the time he stationed in one particular area, the Irken seemed to be doing nothing at all. His ship just floated there, without leaving behind any complicated device or even just the sign that one had been activated.

Dib's best guess was that his rival was collecting data of some sort, for a purpose that was still unclear. The Invader hadn't showed any particular fishy behaviour around him either, but it was also to be said that he hadn't put in action one of his plans in almost two weeks by now. Whatever he was working on had to be absorbing all his attention and free time and that couldn't not worry the human. It had to be something _big_ and that, when Zim was concerned, was never good news.

As a precaution, he had programmed his instruments so that they would have warned him in the case the Cruiser had stationed in a spot for a longer period of time or if traces of a different piece of alien technology had been detected. His sensors, from what he could see as he checked his computer while rubbing the sleep off his eyes, seemed to have woken him up because the first thing was happening. Zim had been circling the area above the Antarctic continent for over twenty-five minutes now and he didn't seem intentioned to leave any time soon.

The teen narrowed his eyes. His rival had always visited different zones of the atmosphere and that was the first time he went back to a place he had already inspected. And it was the very first spot the alien had checked out too, from what he knew. Perhaps finally his nemesis was starting to put his plan into motion.

That thought was enough to completely wake up the scythe-haired boy and in a matter of a few minutes he was dressed and down in the garage, activating Tak's ship. The vehicle was fully repaired and functional, but no matter how many times he had half rebuilt and reprogrammed it during the last three years and a half, he had been unable to get rid of the annoying personality that its first owner had installed in the main system.

"Oh, so you're still alive! And still busy wasting your time chasing that fraud of Zim?" The ship greeted him, as he opened the glass that covered the cockpit to get inside. "Weren't you supposed to be smarter than most of your species?"

"Shut up and take off," Dib shot back, rolling his eyes. He wished he could have at least found the muting option, but he had the feeling that the artificial intelligence governing the vehicle had disabled it. Perhaps the only one who could have helped him out with the issue was the his nemesis, but he wasn't _that_ desperate just yet. He would have taken getting mocked by the ship every time above asking his rival for assistance. Also because, despite Zim's recent, slightly more helpful attitude, it was still likely that the answer to his request would have been the alien laughing in his face. "And stop talking as if I hadn't used you in _years._ It's hardly been a few weeks."

"Let a girl dream!" Was the sarcastic comeback as the vehicle finally started to move, raising from the ground and floating out of the garage before fully taking off towards the night sky. It would have probably preferred to break through the whole building in its raising, as it had already tried to do once, but this time the human had been ready and holding the commands to prevent it from trying anything funny.

Dib rolled his eyes, but he didn't try to talk back. By now he had learnt that the ship liked to have the last word and that, if he granted it, the computer usually left him be, at least for a while. So, he just punched the coordinates in and headed towards his destination as quickly as the engines could allow him. He wasn't going to waste his time fighting with an arrogant, sarcastic artificial intelligence and risk losing his best chance to surprise Zim and find out whatever the Invader was currently up to. No matter if his ego would have been a bit offended for having to admit defeat to someone who wasn't even really there. Besides, the reluctant respect he felt for Tak made the irritation a bit more bearable. The female Irken had almost wrecked his planet that one time, fooling even him and Gaz with her perfect disguise and cunning ways.

Rethinking about the episode, in the aftermath, always made him feel a bit stupid. He had dismissed Zim's warning like an idiot, even after the Invader had showed up at his house specifically to warn him and ask for his _assistance_. And he had done it just because he thought that the girl, or rather the disguise the alien was wearing, was cute and smart. So much for being a good paranormal investigator. If his sister hadn't listened to Zim when he had refused to do it, now Earth would have most likely been just another planet under the Irken dominion. The idea of losing his home world to his nemesis was bad, but having another alien doing it in the Invader's place was even worse. However, he also had to admit that, if the fate of Earth hadn't been at stake, he would have probably agreed that Tak had had all the right reasons to want to ruin Zim's life, considering what he had done to her.

He shook his head, chasing those thoughts away. That had happened years before and Tak hadn't showed up again, despite her promises to come back and take what, in her eyes, was rightfully hers. He had better focus on the current menace, instead of dwelling on the past ones. He checked the screens. The Irken seemed to be still busy doing whatever he was doing and had showed no indication of wanting to leave the area, most likely feeling safe and not expecting to be interrupted. Dib smirked slightly to himself. Zim was in for a nasty surprise.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

"It looks like a _huuuuge_ donut hole in the sky!" GIR chirped, peeking at the screen from behind his master's shoulder. The image showed a coloured representation of the Earthen atmosphere of the area, which underlined the thinner layer of ozone they were there to study. The changes in the concentration of the gas around the hole were marked with different colours and the effect was the one of a rainbow archery target. Or of a weird donut, as the robot apparently liked to call it.

"GIR, be silent. Zim is trying to concentrate," the Invader, hissed, busy making adjustments on another portable screen, which projected the blueprints that Skoodge had sent him from the main archives of Irk. He and the Computer had spent several nights adapting them to their project and finding substitutes for the materials they couldn't get their hands on. Now it was time for the last recalibrations before starting to build the actual machine.

The Irken was sat crossed leg on the pilot seat, the tablet in his lap, and kept shifting. Since his sudden realisation about his height, he had started to notice how the Cruiser was hardly as comfortable as it used to be for his current size and he knew that, sooner or later, he would have to do something about it. However, it would have to wait till he was done with his current project, because he didn't have much free time left for anything that wasn't going Skool outside of it. Modifying the blueprints and joining together the devices that were reproduced on them had turned out to be much more complicated than he had expected, both because he needed to build the machines much bigger than they were supposed to be and because he would have made a slightly improper use of them.

"There," he mumbled under his breath, correcting one last number. He lifted his eyes towards the screen GIR was staring at with fascination, tilting his head and using his claw to approximately measure the innermost circle before comparing it to a specific section of the on-scale blueprint. "This should do."

If he was wrong, the planet would have gone out of its orbit like a suddenly pierced balloon, or at least that was the description that his Computer had offered him as worst-case scenario. The advice that had followed had been to be at a safe distance when the device would be activated and Zim fully intended to take it. He had no desire to be dragged around the whole solar system and to risk ending up in the sun or crashing somewhere together with the rest of the Earth.

"We're done here, GIR," he announced, turning off the portable screen and slipping it back in his PAK. He rubbed his hands together, smirking widely to himself. "Now all Zim has to do is to put my amazing skills at work and build this machine! Then I will be rid of the hideous effects of the filthy Earth rain! Or, at least, it will hurt much less being showered by it." He reached out for the commands of the Cruiser. "You will help me. And with that I mean that you won't mess everything up as per usual. This is an order, GIR."

He turned to look at his SIR Unit only to find out that he wasn't perched on his shoulder anymore but was, instead, pressing his face against the glass of the cockpit, looking at something behind them. The Irken's eye twitched slightly. "GIR? Are you listening to Zim?" He called, feeling a hint of irritation sparking up in his chest. Why was his sidekick so easily distracted all the time?!

"Master! Master! We have a _visitor_!" GIR screeched thrilled, detaching his metal skull from the window to be able to point at something coming towards them. He hadn't heard a word of what had been said in the last minutes, too absorbed by his discovery. "It's the Big-Head Boy! I didn't know you had invited him to the huge donut hole party!"

" _Party_?" The Invader repeated, squinting at the robot, before his mind caught up with the rest of the other's speech. "The Dib is here?!"

He grabbed his sidekick by a leg and pulled him out of the way, sending him rolling and giggling on the bottom of the Cruiser, to be able to see what the SIR Unit had been pointing. There was something approaching, a small dot that was quickly getting bigger and taking the shapes of Tak's ship. An Irken curse escaped the alien's lips. "What is _he_ doing here? How was I detected?! Curse you, Dib! Filthy human pig! He cannot find out about Zim's amazing plans! GIR, we need to take evasive manoeuvres!"

"Wouldn't it be easier to tell him what we're up to?" GIR asked curiously, shifting in a sitting position just to be shoved back against the wall of the Cruiser as said ship suddenly spun on itself to turn in the direction of the oncoming vehicle. "We're making his planet better. He should be happy and leave us alone."

" _NEVER_! What I decide to do with this ball of dirt is Zim's business only! The worm child needs to learn to mind his own!" The Irken yelled, shooting him a murderous glare. The robot had a good point, he couldn't deny it, but telling his rival what he was planning to do would have been like admitting that he had given up on destroying the planet and it might have even implied that he was thinking about _staying_. He couldn't have that, because it would have led to the whole truth surfacing. The fact that his nemesis knew about his deal with Ms Xander was bad enough. He refused to be humiliated in his enemy's eyes more than it had already happened. "And, even if Zim told him, he wouldn't believe it."

The robot blinked, unaffected by both the blow and the scolding, and shrugged. "Okie dokie," he simply said, pushing himself up and lacing once again around the seat headrest. "Then what do we do with Mary?"

Zim's expression took a slightly sadistic hue. He and the human hadn't had a proper clashing in some time and he had missed it. Perhaps being discovered wasn't such a negative thing if it meant that he had the chance to send his rival home crying and licking his wounds. "We rain some doom over his overgrown head," he answered, hitting the button that turned the autopilot off. "It will teach him to stay out of Zim's business and way for a while."

The words were barely out of his mouth when the Cruiser suddenly jumped forward, heading at full speed towards Tak's ship. If the two vehicles had crashed, the impact would have surely destroyed them both and brought a huge amount of harm to their occupants. An Irken could survive the collision, even if perhaps the fall that would have followed could have represented a problem for him too, but a human would have surely perished. Not that Zim was planning to let the crash happen. He was sure that the teen would have moved out of his way in time. Or, if the other had been too slow to react, he would have changed the trajectory himself, at the last moment, even if he liked the first option better.

Dib's eyes grew huge as he watched the alien ship rushing at full speed towards him, showing no intention of slowing down. When he had first reached the area, he had been certain that his nemesis wouldn't have noticed him till it was too late and the fact that the other vehicle had kept going in slow circles even when he had entered the range of its sensor had confirmed his hypothesis. He had intended to ambush the Invader, coming out from behind the Cruiser, but he hadn't considered the unlikely chance that GIR, of all people, would have spotted him. He had seen the robot pressing himself against the glass and looking towards him, waving. He then had seen his mouth moving and him pointing in the direction of his ship, clearly warning Zim that they weren't alone. So much for the surprise effect. Still, he hadn't expected that the Irken's reaction would have been turning his vehicle around and trying to crash it into his own.

"Curse you, Zim!" He exclaimed, quickly pushing the ship's commands, managing to move out of the way just in time to avoid the impact, the Voot Cruiser passing only a few inches away with a whooshing sound. The sudden fear that had caught his breath at the sight of the attack melted into relief, which however was quickly replaced by incredulous rage. He had known that his rival could be stupid and that he was undoubtedly _crazy_ , but that was too much even for him. Perhaps he should have reconsidered his opinion about the other not having self-destructive tendencies. "Have you gone mad, space scum?! Are you trying to get us both killed?!"

"Not us! Just _you_ , filthy human!" Zim shot back, slowing down his Cruiser just to be able to wave a gloved hand in the teen's direction. He crossed his arms over his chest and lifted his chin. "Try whatever you want, worm child. As if you could ever _harm_ the Mighty Zim!"

The human rolled his eyes. " _I_ wasn't trying anything! You did it all on your own, space boy," he pointed out, exasperated, but his attitude changed as soon as he noticed that the alien's ship was still moving. He had expected his rival to stop and fight him, while instead he seemed to be attempting to get away.

"Hey! Where are you going?!" He yelled after him, grabbing the controls back and turning his ship around, ready to start the pursuit. "Come back, you coward! I won't let you get away until I know what you're up to!"

"If you had thought that Zim would had just stood there and let you capture me, you are a _fool_ , Dib-stink!" The Irken shouted back, but there was a hint of irritation in his voice. How dared the worm child to call him a coward? He wasn't running away. Not really. He just wanted to prevent his nemesis from finding out what he was doing. "If you want to learn about my amazing plan, you'll have to catch Zim! But no stinky human can do such a thing, so your filthy planet is _doomed_!"

"If someone is doomed, it's you, stupid alien!" Dib exclaimed, pushing his own vehicle to give chase to the Cruiser. So the Invader was following another of his crazy plans, one he had been working on for over a week apparently. He briefly wondered if his nemesis was going to make it especially nasty because of what had happened with the Hi Skool counsellor and a small shiver ran down his spine at the thought, even if he pretended not to have noticed it. "I won't just catch you, I'll stop you and wreck whatever evil, dumb plan you're plotting behind our backs!"

The two ships chased each other all around the area for some time, the alien either avoiding the fire of his rival's cannons or trying to impact against the human's vehicle, to throw it off trajectory, while the teen, when he wasn't trying to attack, was busy avoiding being crushed. After several, heated minutes of what looked more like a painful game of tag than a real fight, because the ships kept alternatingly bumping into each other, the Irken took a sudden turn to avoid another laser beam, but, instead of trying to hit his rival in return, he directed his Cruiser upwards and rushed out of the planet's atmosphere, towards open space. Dib was caught off guard for a moment, but he recovered quickly and followed suit, despite the doubt that it might have been a trap.

A smirk opened on Zim's face as he saw the human's ship following him. The other was doing exactly what he wanted him to. Foolish creature. He knew that solar system much better than the teen did, having mapped the position of every single asteroid and rock, and he was planning to exploit that knowledge to his advantage. Not to mention that, unlike Gaz's, his nemesis's piloting skills weren't even close to match his.

"Stop running and face me, Zim!" Dib called out towards the alien, not because he was getting tired of the chase, but more because he was a bit worried about what the other might try now that they were in open space.

"And who tells you that Zim is running, Dib-pig?" The Invader shot back without hesitation, speeding forward past what would have been Mars's orbit if the planet had still been there. His sensors warned him that they were approaching the Asteroid Belt and his smirk widened. "The truth is that there is no way you can keep up with me, filthy human!" He was aware that those words would have just fuelled his rival's annoyance and determination to catch him. Humans tended to become sloppy when they were irritated. Irkens too, but that was a thought he refused to acknowledge. "Give up already!"

Just as Zim had predicted, Dib's hands tightened around the ship's controls, his irritation growing to the point that he decided to throw away the caution he had imposed himself to observe. The alien was making fun of him, dragging him into that endless, reckless chase and he hated how amused the other sounded every time he spoke. Gaz was right, as she was far too often, when she said that he allowed the Irken to get under his skin, but he couldn't help it. The Invader slipped past his defences almost all the time, as if he _belonged_ there. And perhaps at this point Zim did, because it was part of the weird balance of their relationship. No one ever managed to set him off as the alien did, just as his nemesis, while getting angered far too often for everyone's sake, always had in store a special kind of contempt for him, a heartfelt one he didn't address to anyone else.

"I'm going to shut that big mouth of his up this time," he growled, taking after his rival. "I'll show him, once again, what this "foolish human" can do to his ugly Irken mug!"

"He'll kick your ass, if you get anywhere close to the Asteroid Belt," Tak's ship informed him, matter-of-factly, but there was a hint of smugness in its tone. "And you know it."

"Didn't I tell you to shut up, earlier?" The human grumbled, hating how the computer was speaking his most rational inner thoughts, the ones he was trying so hard to ignore. "Why don't you help me out, instead? To kick my ass, he has to kick yours first, so it would benefit us both if we cooperated, for once. Or have our past experiences taught you nothing?"

"I could ask you the same question," came the ready answer, but the screens in front of the teen lit up a bit brighter, sign that the system had fully activated itself. Perhaps, for once, he would have got something good out of that battle of insults. Like not getting crushed between two giant asteroids. Or being exploded by the fire of an alien cannon.

It turned out that Tak's ship, and Dib's reason, were right. As soon as both vehicles were inside the Asteroid Belt, the Invader didn't waste any more time and tried to use every advantage he had against the human. He followed the most complicated trajectories, slipping in the narrowest spaces and forcing the teen to make the most difficult moves to be able to follow. And, as if causing him to risk crashing into every asteroid they passed wasn't enough, the alien started to use his tractor beam to throw said space rocks in his direction. Dib saw his life passing before his eyes a few times and, most likely, if his ship hadn't decided to help out, he would have ended up if not dead, at least severely hurt in more than one occasion.

From his part, Zim was enjoying himself in causing his nemesis as many problems as physically possible. He was a bit disappointed by the fact that he had managed to deliver just a few hits, most likely because Tak's computer had to be helping the human out, but the faces that the teen made every time he came too close to a crash or whenever one of his lasers passed too close to his ship's hull made up for it, at least in part. However, he knew that he would have had to literally cut the chase and head back to Earth, sooner or later, because he had tons of work waiting for him and, to do it, he would have had to make sure that Dib wouldn't have followed him to his base and kept bugging him. There were many ways in which he could achieve it and the most practical, at the moment, was leaving the human stranded in space. The other would have eventually found a way to get back, he always did, so he wouldn't have had to worry about getting him killed for real. Making him very uncomfortable and a bit freaked out, which were very _nice_ thoughts, yes instead.

"Time to…" He started to say, ready to pursue that plan, but was cut off when GIR suddenly jumped in his lap, stealing the Cruiser's commands out of his hands with a happy yell.

"Master, let me play too!" The robot exclaimed, pulling and almost sending them crashing into one of the asteroids. The narrowly escaped impact seemed to fuel his enthusiasm because he took another, even more abrupt turn. "Yaaaaaay! I like this game!"

"GIR, what are you doing?!" Zim screamed, horrified, and tried to peel the SIR Unit away from the controls, but he only got to make the ship swerve even more than it had been. He couldn't believe it. He wasn't even trying to wipe the planet out of existence, but just to get rid of his nemesis _temporarily_ , and yet his plans were being utterly ruined by the robotic menace that was supposed to be his sidekick. "You'll make us crash, you moron! Hand the commands back to Zim! _NOW_!"

"But you played till now! It's my tuuuurn!" GIR protested stubbornly and caused the Cruiser to take another turn, which ended with it smashing against one of the asteroids and being sent flying across the Belt. Its occupants were thrown out of the seat and tossed all around the cockpit as the vehicle twirled on itself, the Irken's irate curses and the robot's delighted yells echoing in the cabin.

Dib stared at the scene from where he had stopped his own ship, blinking. When the Voot Cruiser had swerved for the first time, he had instantly thought that Zim was about to try some other nasty trick on him, but his fears had quickly dissipated when the Invader's vehicle had started to _bounce_ from an asteroid to the next, causing lots of damage to itself and none to him. It had become clear that his nemesis had lost control of his own ship and he had the feeling that he had to thank a certain crazy robot for that.

A small smirk opened on the human's lips and he pushed the engines forward again, following at a safe distance his rival's Cruiser till it was finally thrown out of the belt, hull full of dents and scratches. It was a miracle that it was still functioning. After a few more rotations, the alien ship finally stilled, meaning that Zim had managed to get his hands back on the controls, but at this point the teen was laughing out aloud.

"What's wrong, space boy? Forgot how to pilot?" He called out, locking his laser on the damaged vehicle, ready to shoot. "Looks like I got you!"

The Invader let out a growl, shoving GIR off his face, where the SIR Unit had laced while they were being bounced around. His nape hurt from where it had impacted with the floor and he could feel several bruises forming under his uniform. He was going to dismantle his robot for real this time. But only after he had taken care of the worm child. He gritted his teeth as he turned the ship around, so that it was facing Dib's. The foolish human could laugh as much as he wanted, but he would have soon regretted making fun of him and especially not shooting when he could have.

The Irken's fingers flew on the console. His own weapons were down, but there was still something else he could use. He wouldn't be driving his rival against an asteroid, but he still had all the intention to make him crash _hard_ on the ground. A claw hit one of the blinking buttons on the control unit and the tractor beam shot forward, locking its grip around the body of Tak's ship. Without wasting a moment, the alien made his Cruiser jerk upwards, causing the other vehicle to follow suit and getting out of the range of its weapon.

"Who can't pilot now, Dib-stink?" He called out, voice dripping with satisfaction. "Did you really think that you could beat Zim? Just because I had a…uh, minor setback? Tsk, you foolish, inferior creature! I will use your own planet to defeat you this time!"

Dib hardly had the time to react when the Irken made his move. One moment he had been staring at his rival's furious and humiliated expression and the next he was the one being thrown out of his seat and sent bumping against the glass of the cockpit.

"What the heck…" He exclaimed, but the sentence ended with a pained groan when his back collided with the cool material. His sight blurred for a moment, but the Invader's words echoed in his head anyway, his mind fighting to catch up with the meaning of the other's last statement. He struggled to get back on his feet, but, before he could even try, his ship was dragged forward again and the motion caused him to bang into the window once again.

"Stupid alien!" He cursed under his breath, making another attempt and this time succeeding in getting a hold of the seat. He pulled himself forward, back into it. His relief, however, was short lived, because, as soon as his eyes had a full view of what was going on, he felt himself freezing in his spot. Zim's Cruiser was ahead of him, flying a bit higher to stay out of his fire range, and it was running at full speed towards the Earth, hauling Tak's ship, and therefore the human himself, towards it.

The teen's eyes widened for the umpteenth time as he scurried to grab the controls. No, no, no. That crazy bastard was planning to throw him down on the planet as soon as they would have passed the atmosphere, as if he was launching a ball. He didn't want to end up spread like a scrambled egg all over the ground of his front yard. He tried to use the ship's engines to put up a fight, but the Cruiser had gained too much speed and the tractor beam was too powerful for him to be able to do anything but slowing it down a little bit. Not enough to prevent the worst, though.

"Zim! _ZIM_ , damn you! Stop!" He yelled, starting to feel the panic raising in his chest. He didn't want to believe that the alien would have really _murdered_ him, because he was almost sure that the Irken wouldn't have done such a thing unless he had given him no other choice, but it was hard not to be filled with uncertainty while being dragged at full speed towards a planet that looked more and more solid. "Zim, let me go! You'll kill me, you stupid space scum!"

The Invader burst out in one of his evil laughs in answer and the sound just fed Dib's doubts on the other's true intentions even more. Perhaps Zim wouldn't end him, but he had made it pretty clear, in more than one occasion, that he wasn't above breaking every single bone in his body just for his personal enjoyment. He considered _begging_ for his life for a moment, but quickly discarded the idea. He would have just ended up humiliating himself for nothing and he wanted to keep the little bit of dignity he still had left, especially if that would have been his last battle. He wasn't doing a good job at it, though, since he was well aware that he had to look as pale as a ghost for the terror in that moment.

The impact with the planet's atmosphere at such a speed caused both ships to shake, but Zim just gripped harder at the controls and didn't slow down. Next to him GIR, lanced on the headrest once again, was screaming as he had often done while they were riding the fastest rides on Craic Spor, thrilled and excited and perhaps just a bit scared. The Irken himself felt elated. It had been a long while since the last time he had pulled such a move. It had been before his banishment to Foodcourtia, and now he remembered why he used to like so much wreaking others' ships as he was about to with Tak's. The fact that the vehicle belonged to the hideous female made the whole act even more satisfying, but even if it hadn't, Dib's yells of terror, panicked insults and pathetic attempts to stop him were all he needed to feel fulfilled. If his Tallest could have seen him now, maniac smirk on his face and magenta orbs shining with glee, they would have surely called him a creep and a Defective. It was fine, though, because for once he knew exactly what he was and what he looked like.

The City finally came into view, the buildings becoming more and more recognisable as they rushed towards the ground. He quickly located his rival's house and aimed for it, his eyes locking on the Irken numbers running quickly across one of the screens. He heard Dib yelling his name once again, with even more desperation. He hadn't openly begged him, but the demand and the plea were perfectly audible in his tone. Zim snickered, but he forced himself to ignore the human's words. It was almost time.

"Hold on tight, GIR!" He ordered to the robot, who just giggled louder, ecstatic.

A moment after the words had left his mouth, the Cruiser came to an abrupt stop, engines reverting their direction. Tak's ship, still caught into their previous momentum, rushed past them, causing the Invader's vehicle to shake and jerk down slightly but violently, because the tractor beam was still locked. Zim's hand shot forward and in a blink the ray of light that linked the two ships together was gone, causing the Cruiser to swerve again, this time upwards, while the other vehicle was shot towards the ground, even if the tug had made it lose most of its deadly speed.

Dib was thrown off the seat once again when the tractor beam brusquely slowed down his ship's fall before being unlocked, but he didn't have the time to understand what had happened because, mere seconds later, he was crashing into the ground of his front yard with a loud, booming sound that set off all the alarms of the neighbourhood and lifted a thick cloud of dust all around the small crater the impact had created. Pain spread all over his body, as he was pressed face down on the floor, but his bones didn't disintegrate as he had come to expect, even if he most likely had gained some cracked ribs.

He had to have blacked out for several moments, because, when he blinked his eyes open again, most of the dust had deposited back on the ground and the alarms he had heard blaring just after the crash had been turned off. Coughing, he managed to crawl towards the control unit and open the cockpit, succeeding in stumbling out of it after a couple of failed attempts. His legs were shaking, both because of the adrenaline and the strong emotions he had experience in the minutes that had preceded the impact and because of the ache in all his limbs. His stomach was turning slightly and his head was spinning, fast enough to force him to lean into the hull to be able to stand.

Dib blinked a few times to clear his sight and, when he finally managed to lift his eyes without feeling like he was about to throw up, his gaze locked on the figure standing a few feet away from him. The moonlight gave a silvery tint to Zim's green skin and his large magenta orbs looked much more dangerous in the dim darkness of the night, just as his smirk seemed much more sinister. His PAK legs were out, lifted in the air, threateningly. Like that, under that particular light, the Irken looked even more _alien_ than he usually did. Not that the human could have ever forgotten what the Invader truly was, but it seemed somehow exasperated now. And absolutely _terrifying_. He didn't know what he felt more intensely. The shiver of pure dread that the danger in his enemy's eyes made run down his spine or the anger caused by the smugness in the other's expression.

"Zim…" He started in a growl, not knowing if he would have ended up yelling in fear or in rage, but he wasn't allowed to find out because, without warning, one of the metal limbs shot forward, plunging into the ship hull right next to his face, effectively getting the words stuck in his throat.

A gasp escaped Dib's mouth instead of them when two clawed hands grabbed him by the front of his T-shirt and threw him on the ground, renewing the hot pain that the crash had spread all over his body. He tried to push himself up, unwilling to go down without a fight, even when it was clear that he had lost the battle, but the Invader's boot was suddenly planted in the centre of his chest, shoving him down again, while two spider legs stabbed the cloth of his trench coat sleeves, preventing him from lifting his arms and trying to free himself.

"Victory for Zim!" The alien shouted to the starry sky, lifting his fists towards it in triumph and gloating with the amount of exaggerated smugness that only he could pull off. Then, after having theatrically bathed in his own self-satisfaction, he leant down, face inching close to the teen's. "Looks like Zim has _conquered_ you again, Dib," he smirked with both arrogance and amusement, the tone of his voice showing that this time he had chosen the verb on purpose.

Dib, who had got even tenser after having been shoved down again and pinned to the ground, felt his body suddenly relaxing at those words. It was absurd, maybe, but now he was completely sure that the Invader wouldn't have tried to kill him. There was still the distinct possibility that the other would have decided to torture him horribly or to lock him up and use him as a test subject, but no lethal consequence would have come from whatever the Irken would have decided to do. His nemesis had made a _joke_ , as much as Zim could be capable of such a thing, and that made the human wanted to laugh, perhaps a bit _hysterically_ , as the physical and emotional tension that had filled him melted away, and the adrenaline that had sent his heart beating frantically in his ears finally started to leave his system. He held the impulse back, though, because he didn't want to risk enraging the alien once again, especially now that he in such an exposed and vulnerable position before him.

"So, what? Are you going to kiss me again?" He couldn't help taunting. The idea of never talking about the episode again had been his in the first place, but he felt authorized to break their agreement since his rival had started it. He ignored the glare he was addressed at the remark and tried to shift in a more comfortable position, failing because all he got was for the other to press his heel even deeper into his chest. So, he resigned himself to stay still and lifted his amber eyes again, fully locking them into those dark magenta orbs. There was something he couldn't identify in them, an empty shadow that was always there, even if now the Irken wasn't wearing that creepy hollow expression, and despite the smugness and the triumph shining in his gaze.

"For real, Zim," he resumed, in a more serious tone. "What on Earth are you planning this time?"

Zim scoffed, straightening slightly. "I told you already, Dib-pig. It's none of your stinky business," he claimed crossing his arms on his chest and turning his gaze away, a stubborn expression on his face. "You're a fool if you think that Zim will tell you. Just as you're stupid for thinking that I will ever want to repeat that disgusting mating ritual. With _you_ , of all people. Your desire will remain unsatisfied, inferior creature. No one is good enough to be Zim's love pig!" His expression faltered for a moment, as in his thoughts echoed the fact that, perhaps, it was the other way around, that _he_ , as a Defective, wasn't worth of anyone, but he quickly silenced that small, cruel, traitorous voice. "But I'm not trying to rain doom on your stupid ball of dirt right now, so leave me be."

Despite himself, Dib felt his face heating up slightly at the Invader's insinuations. "My desire…? What?! I never said that I want to kiss you again!" He protested loudly, grimacing, even if the reaction was slightly forced. He had contrasting feelings towards the memory of the episode, but he refused to acknowledge any of them, aside from the rightful hint of disgust. "I'm perfectly happy with your tongue away from my mouth and _throat,_ space scum." To underline his disagreement, he pushed against the metallic limbs holding him down, even knowing that he wouldn't managed to break free. Then his gaze turned suspicious. "And why should I believe you? This could be all a ploy to get me off track, so you can go behind my back and attempt one of your crazy tricks. I'm not so naive and blind!"

The Irken dug his foot hard in his nemesis's chest once again. "Zim was under the effect of those radiations and that's the only reason why I enjoyed your filthy kiss!" He growled, clearly not pleased by the comeback he had received. "You, on the other hand, have no excuse for taking pleasure in it. So admit your instinct to submit to your future overlord!" Then he rolled his eyes. "Tell me, Earth monkey. When has been the last time I have tried, for real, to wreck your pathetic planet?"

"I think that you're still very confused about the meaning of the whole kissing thing," the human grumbled under his breath, unable to convincingly deny what his rival had said. He didn't want to submit to the green menace, of course, but he would have been lying if he had stated that he had absolutely hated their messy, awkward make out session. On one hand, he had been grossed out by it, but on the other it had been too intense and intimate to really despise what they had shared.

Forcing those thoughts away, he coaxed himself to smirk a bit, choosing to jump on the opening the other had given him to bring the focus on the subject back on the alien and away from him. "Oh, so you _liked_ it, even if it was the radiations making you do it?" His smugness, though, was almost immediately replaced by a thoughtful expression. "It's been a while since you've tried for real," he admitted, but the suspicion was back in his eyes. "Let's say that I believe you, which, for the record, I don't." Not completely, at least. "My question still stands. _What_ are you doing, Zim?"

Zim's claw dug in the teen's throat as he pointed it towards him. "You're _lying_! _LYING_!" He screeched indignant, at the taunt he had been thrown, even if he was aware to have inadvertently admitted it himself. A displeased sound left his lips and he suddenly retrieved both his PAK legs and his foot from Dib, still taking the time to kick the teen hard in his side before stepping away. Then, a small knowing grin opened on his face. "And my plan is for Zim to know and for the Dib to find out!" He exclaimed, a hint of the arrogance he had previously showed lighting his voice once again. "Now farewell, pig meat! I have work to do!"

A pained yelp escaped the human's lips as the alien's boot collided with his already bruised hip, but he still rolled on his side, trying to grab his nemesis and failing quite pathetically because the other was already out of arm's reach. "Zim! Wait a moment! _Zim_!" He called after the Invader, but the latter didn't turn around, spider legs emerging once again and allowing him to climb on the closest building. A few moments later he was jumping from a roof to the next and disappearing in the darkness of the night.

Another groan left Dib's throat, but this time the noise was made of pure exasperation. Once again he had been handed his ass and left on the ground with a lot of questions and no answers. At first, when that mess had started, he had been sure that, sooner or later, he would have got all the information he wanted on the case. Now he was starting to wonder if he would have ever at least understood what all that was about.

"Damned space pest. He's driving me _crazy_ with his randomness!" He complained to no one in particular. He then closed his eyes and took a breath in. He would have gone back worrying about insane alien invaders the following day. Now he needed to get up, do something about his injuries and get Tak's ship back to the garage. He shot a glance at said vehicle. It didn't look good at all. Apparently, he would have had to repair it once again. Who knew, perhaps he would have had more luck with purging the irritating computer's personality that time.

* * *

Hey guys!

I'm late again with the update, I know, but I'm studying like crazy...Again. Yay university. Speaking of that, I'm dead tired most of the times, so I apologise in advanced if there are more typos or any other kind of mistake than the usual in this chapter. I re-read it thrice, but my brain is kind of melted this days, so I might have missed them. Also, my first language isn't English and I don't have a beta and...my syntax gets a bit weird (for English at least) when I'm tired ^^"

Aside from that! Despite the melted synapses, I gotta say that I *love* writing this chapter. It was a lot of fun and I'm sort of proud of how it came out (unlike the previous one...meh), so I hope that you enjoyed it too! I kind of tried to structure it as if it was one episode of the show, so it's basically just Dib and Zim fighting each other...But I think that it was time to put something more canon-like (plotwise at least) in the story! And I wanted to write something a bit light-hearted and *easy* before things start getting intense and complicated again. Yeah, because I sort of have a bit of a mess planned ahead. And a lot of feels.

Also, a WONDERFUL person drew me a picture of Acelynn, and I want to share it, just in case someone was interested to see it! **adancingstarinthechaos()tumblr()com/post/177175803319/this-is-a-picture-that-the-wonderful** (yeah, that's my Tumblr, and to see the link you have to replace the "()" with "." because as we knew this site hates links). She's an AMAZING artist, so if you wanna see some very good IZ art, I suggest you to follow her! Or at least to check out her blog :D

I'll leave you alone now, also because my brain can't really connect that well for me to ramble much. Thanks a lot to all the people who are reading and following the story! It's a real incentive! Even if now as much as the comments you guys left me. I swear to the gods, I write for my reviewers as much as I do it for myself now. I LOVE reading your feed back. It always makes my day! So thanks a whole lot! Also, if I failed to reply some of your reviews at this turn, please forgive me. I've been so utterly busy and I couldn't figure out whom I had answered to and whom I hadn't. I'm honestly fried, bear with me! I'll make sure to get back to everyone, the next time!


	23. Chapter 23

"So, how's your science project going, Zim?" Ms Xander asked, crossing her legs under the desk. Her tone was as pleasant as always, but her eyes were attentive. That was the third session she had had with Zim since he had invited her into his strange home and she still had made no real progress with helping her patient figuring out what to do about the emptiness his "discovery" had left in his life. Whenever she had tried to approach the subject directly, the teen had either quickly changed it or become unresponsive until she had given up on asking.

However, there had been a few advancements, in her eyes. First of all, the passion that Zim was putting in his current project. He became very lively and animated when he talked about it and, for once, in a positive way. Usually he reached that level of emotions only when he was angry, and that was a very good thing, especially considering her patient's _obvious_ anger issues.

The second episode worth of mention was the prank he had played on his "Tallest". The counsellor had been a bit worried about the choice of trick and its consequences, because sending drugged food to people could have put Zim in serious troubles, but she hadn't mentioned it to him, even if perhaps that choice had been a bit of a hazard from her part. However, she hadn't wanted to ruin the exhilaration he seemed to feel because of his achievement. He probably didn't even realise what a huge step he had taken, but she did. It was a true act of _rebellion_ from his part, something that Zim had seemed to consider impossible for him till not much time before. With his actions, even if they had been just a cruel joke, he had questioned the authority of his supposed leaders and had, unconsciously, started to free himself from their influence, choosing to stand up for himself instead of submitting to them and their judgement. That was progress without any doubt.

"I have reached a satisfactory stage in my plan," the alien stated with a hint of sincere pride, an emotion that nowadays wasn't frequent in his voice, unless it was simulated. He then rolled his fake violet eyes in annoyance. "Last night I got plenty of work done. Even if I would have achieved more if the Dib hadn't interrupted me."

"Oh?" The woman echoed, tilting her head as a hint of curious surprise coloured her voice. "Dib came over? What happened? And…" She trailed off for a moment, biting back a patient sigh. "You still haven't told him anything about the project, have you?"

"What do you think? We _fought_ , as always. And Zim won, of course," the Invader claimed waving a hand dismissively. Then the irritation came back at full force in his tone. "And _of course_ he doesn't know anything! I can't allow the worm child to find out that my mission is over! I told you this many times already, Acelynn-doc."

This time the counsellor allowed the sigh to escape her lips. "Yes, you did. I know that you're _utterly_ convinced that, if Dib knew, he would lose interest in you," she nodded, in a calm tone, despite the hint of exasperation blossoming in her chest. At times she really didn't know what to do with Zim's unbreakable walls of blind stubbornness. It was so hard to find a way around them. Assuming that there was one in the first place.

She hooked a strand of blond hair behind her ear. They had had that discussion thrice already and every time she had tried, in vain, to persuade her patient that Dib wouldn't stop being his…nemesis or anything else just because now he no longer had those mysterious orders to follow. Zim had been adamant in his beliefs and had refused to listen to reason. She had also attempted to explain him that, even if the two of them had stopped fighting each other, that wouldn't have meant the end of their relationship. She had pointed out that it would have just changed into something more peaceful. However, the teen had refused that idea too, looking at her as if she had been crazy and stating that his mission was the only reason why the other boy was interested in him. That was how things had been between them since the very start and it couldn't have changed, no matter what might have happened.

The memory of that particular comeback almost made Acelynn sigh again. At that point, she had been forced to give up, even if not without reluctance. However, she had understood that she was in no position to fight against such a stubbornness and the insecurities she believed being its roots. Keeping on trying would have just made her patient even less cooperative and perhaps even more adverse to the idea than he already was. The only person who could have proved Zim wrong was Dib himself.

"Then why are you questioning Zim about it again?" The Irken half growled, brows furrowed and a very unhappy expression on his face. "You are wasting our time, while you are supposed to be using it to _help_ me."

Ms Xander was tempted to point out that she couldn't offer any assistance if he didn't allow her to do her job properly, but she avoided to speak those words, knowing that they would have just made things tenser between them. "Let's forget I asked, alright, Zim?" She offered, with a pacifying smile. "Tell me about this fight you had with Dib, instead. How did it make you feel?"

Zim relaxed a bit at the change of subject, even if he still kept glaring daggers at the human for a few moments. "At first, I was annoyed that the Dib interrupted. And concerned that he could discover Zim's amazing project." He made a pause, almost daring the woman to say something about it, but when she didn't he nodded in satisfaction and went on. "However, as the fight progressed, it turned out to be…fun. I hadn't enjoyed one like that in a long time. Even if that idiot of GIR almost made me lose at some point. But I recovered quickly because of my superior training. Seeing the foolish pig creature crashed on the ground, at Zim's feet, was very satisfying."

The counsellor nodded, once again swallowing her concern towards her patient's violent tendencies. His descriptions bordered sadism, at times, if what he claimed was true. From his tone, she had the feeling that he had done _worse_ than what he said.

"I see that we still haven't made any progress with the name calling," she simply commented, but she was grinning in amusement, expecting the outraged glare she got as an answer.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

"Master, you have an incoming transmission."

As the words echoed in the laboratory, Zim turned off the laser he was using to solder the two pieces of the hull he had been working on. He lifted his working goggles and turned to shoot a glance at the Computer's main screen, looking slightly annoyed. "If it's Skoodge or anyone else of the sort, tell them I'm busy," he stated, making to move his attention back to his task. He had far too much scheduled for that day to bother with something as trivial as a conversation. "I will call them back later."

"Uh, sir. It's from the Massive," the machine answered, with just a hint of hesitation in its voice, fearing, not without reasons, a bad reaction from the Invader.

The Irken froze in his spot at that, antennae lowering slowly against his skull, his whole body tensing in apprehension. In his eyes, however, passed a flash of contempt. His Tallest never called him, it was always him who had to contact them. There had almost never been an exception to that rule. He could think of only one reason why they would have taken the trouble to send him a transmission and the idea filled him with both dread and disgust. The thought of not answering tempted him, for a brief moment, but he quickly discarded it. He couldn't delay the inevitable forever. Besides, not accepting the call enthusiastically would have been a very suspicious behaviour from his part.

He slipped off his working gloves, revealing his regular ones underneath. "Put it through," he forced himself to order as he moved to stand at attention in front of the bigger screen, trying, and not completely succeeding, to hide the nervousness in his expression.

The blackness of the display was replaced in a blink by Purple's image. Zim's eyes darted around the rest of the picture, but he couldn't spot Red anywhere in sight for the second time. He didn't recognise the room the taller Irken was in either, but it looked like some sort of recharging area, just much shiner, larger and better equipped than the ones he had used in the past.

"Red isn't here this time either, Zim," the Tallest informed him, noticing his puzzled expression. "So don't start contorting like you did during our last call. You can't move my screen just by twisting your body." He scoffed, crossing his arms on his chest. "You should be glad that it's just me, Zim. Red will have your head, _literally_ , if he sees you any time in the near future."

The confusion the Invader had been feeling grew even more at his leader's words. He didn't understand what was going on. He was sure that both Tallest would have been there, if they had wanted to give him the news officially, so the reason behind the call had to be another. The problem was that he couldn't fathom what it might be. Purple looked annoyed, _obviously_ with him, but he didn't seem about to announce him that he had been sentenced to some horrible torture for whatever he had done to cause his bad mood.

"My Tallest?" He could only say, half hopeful and half lost.

"How _stupid_ can you be?" The Irken leader grumbled under his breath, rolling his eyes. "Zim, do you remember your… _gift_? It had… _consequences_ and Red is seriously _pissed_ because of them. I am too, for the record, but not that much. Weirdly enough." Usually his co-ruler was the one who showed more patience towards the Defective's messes and bugging, but that time the roles were reversed. Purple had wondered why exactly his companion had been so set off by the snacks, considering that _he_ , and not Red, had been the one to make a fool of himself, but he hadn't found a plausible explanation and of course the other had refused to tell him. "Because you _knew_ what those sweets would have done, didn't you?"

A sheepish grin blossomed on Zim's face. That was what the call was about then. He still didn't get why Red wasn't there too, but, from what his purple-eyed leader was telling him, it was for the best. "I did test them on myself, my Tallest. I didn't lie to you," he answered, without offering more specific information. "So, I was aware of the…consequences."

An awkward moment of silence followed at that. The shorter Irken's antennae twitched at his own words, the memory of the intense tingling and pleasurable feeling he had experience coming to his mind. Almost as a reflex, the Tallest's own stalk did the exact same movement and they stared at each other for a second, before glancing away, with a mixture of mortification and annoyance.

Purple's arms tightened where they were still crossed over his chest and he cleared his throat, trying to dissolve the weird atmosphere that had fallen over them. "So, you're admitting that you sent us drugged food, _purposefully_?" He asked, even if the sentence sounded more as a statement. "Why did you do such a thing? We could easily have you brought in for _treason_."

The Invader almost scoffed at that. They wouldn't have brought him anywhere near Irk, not for such a foolish reason, and especially not after how his last trial had ended. However, he bit his tongue and avoided making any mention to the fact. He was still playing the role of the faithful, oblivious fool. As much as he hated it, he couldn't forget his part.

"I did, my Tallest, but…Zim meant no harm," he simply answered, the timid grin coming back to his face, but he couldn't help leaning forward a bit, a flash of slyness lighting up his magenta eyes. "And my gift did the opposite of harming you, didn't it? Wasn't it… _good_?"

The Tallest glared at the shorter alien, clearly displeased with his words. He hated how smug the Defective seemed to always be, no matter what he did or what had happened. The fact that Zim hardly ever had a reason to be proud of himself or of his actions and yet was made Purple even madder and more eager to shove the truth in his face. However, in that particular case, the Invader was _right._ He would have lied if he had denied the other's statement and they both knew it.

"It was improper _and_ humiliating doing… _that_ in front of Red," he growled, unwilling to agree with the shorter Irken but also to deny the obvious. His irritation grew as he saw the shorter Irken's smirk widening, but he decided not to acknowledge it. He had better move on. That part of the conversation was giving the Defective far too much satisfaction for his liking. "Enough of this. Just never try to send this kind of…gifts, ever again, especially without revealing them for what they truly are. Now, back to the reason of my call."

The Invader's smugness faded at his leader's last sentence. He had become utterly persuaded that the prank was the reason of the call and now he was at loss once again. His surprise was quickly sided with anger as he saw Purple sneering at him, clearly conscious that he had been the one to catch the shorter Irken off guard this time.

"I will try to remember that, my Tallest," Zim stated tensely, but he couldn't help the hint of reluctance that slipped in his voice as he bowed his head in sign of respect. "What else can I do for you? Name it and Zim will provide."

The taller Irken pondered asking the other to do something really unpleasant in that very same moment, before his eyes, but he was aware that he couldn't stay away for too long. If he had, Red would have noticed and the last thing he wanted was for his co-ruler to surprise him while he was making a clandestine call to the being they loathed the most in the universe. It would have been a bit hard to explain. Besides, he had an already schemed plan to follow for that call. He could have always kept the nasty, harmful requests for the official transmissions. After all, torturing the Invaders was always more fun when he shared the pleasure with the other Tallest than when he did it on his own.

"Those Earthen snacks you sent, drug aside, were…tasteful," he started to answer, his voice turning slightly threatening, so that the other would have immediately known that no comment was welcomed. "I have two simple tasks for you, Zim, so make sure not to mess up. And no _surprises_ this time." The glare that followed the last words wasn't just meaningful but also positively murderous. Then Purple lifted one finger. "First of all, I want you to send more of them. _Without_ the drug. And to _me_ , specifically. Secondly," the other claw came up too, "I need you to do more researches on whatever substance you put in your… _gift._ "

Zim squinted slightly at the demands he was given, briefly wondering if his leader would have ever stopped saying the word "gift" as if he had been mentioning something incredibly disgusting whenever referring to his prank. They had silently established that the donuts had been anything but repugnant. However, his thoughts didn't linger much on that the detail, since attention instantly focused on the second request. The first had surprised him a bit, but not as much. He had already proven that he could make edible sweets and his Tallest thought that he would have never contradicted a direct order, so it was safe to ask him for more. The second task, however, was much more unclear. Not to mention that the idea of ingesting that spice of doom once again, conscious of its effects, made him feel both horrified and disturbingly eager at the same time.

"What kind of… _researches_ , my Tallest?" He asked, cautiously, leaning a bit backwards. He didn't want to know the answer, but he was aware that he needed one.

Purple offered him a shark smirk at the question. He had been expecting it and he was ready to take great pleasure in answering and, especially, in watching the reaction that would have followed. He might have been less upset than Red was about the Defective's little trick, but that didn't mean that he would have condoned it. He wanted, before anything else, to get his payback on Zim, but he was also interested in gaining a few more data on the alien substance. And what could have worked better than achieving the second thing by humiliating the shorter Irken more than the other had done with him? It was the perfect strategy.

"I want to know how it influences your behaviour while interacting with others," he stated in a cruel but casual tone, even lifting his shoulders in a light shrug. "It's nothing that you can't achieve easily and quickly."

The Invader's expression remained puzzled for a moment, then his eyes widened in horror, as his mind caught up with the implications of the order. "But my Tallest! I'm on an _alien_ planet! Are you telling me that I'm supposed to interact with these disgusting creatures while I'm in such a vulnerable st…?!" He started to protest, loudly, incredulity and indignation turning his voice high-pitched, but he was cut off before he could finish.

"You'll do whatever you need to do to accomplish your mission, _Invader_ ," the taller Irken interrupted him firmly. The tone with which he spoke the title was openly scornful. His purple eyes narrowed, in a threateningly manner that wasn't often seen in his expression. "And I want you to report to me as soon as possible. For both tasks. Don't keep me waiting, Zim. You don't want to."

"My Tal…" The smaller alien tried again, but the transmission was close before he could even formulate the second word of his sentence, leaving him roaring in frustration before the now once again black screen. He couldn't believe it. His own brilliant prank had been turned against him, in the worst way possible.

With a growl, he punched the console in front of him hard enough to make the metal bend under the violence of the hit and ignored the pain that shot along his whole arm. "One day Zim will make you regret this too!" He yelled at the display, even if he knew that Purple wouldn't have been able to hear him. Then he picked up his working gloves, which had escaped his grip during his fit of fury. "And this is a promise!"

Fuming, he stomped back to his work station, but didn't pick up his tools, knowing that he would have just ended up destroying his machine if he tried to work on it while he was so enraged. He had to calm down, if he didn't want to undo all his efforts and be forced to start over again. So, he just stood there, glaring daggers are the shiny metal hull, fists clenched so tightly that his claws threatened to tear the thick material of his gloves.

The silence stretched for several minutes until the Computer's artificial voice made a sound as to clear the throat it didn't have. "So, Dib Membrane will have to deal with your umpteenth, weird behaviour, uh?" It commented, voicing, even if with a very different wording, the thoughts that had been twirling around its master's head. After all, it wasn't like the alien would have had much of a choice on which the test subject to use for that experiment. Of course, if it had been up to him, the Irken would have allowed no one in the universe to see him in _that_ peculiar kind of state, but, if someone had to, his nemesis was the only available and paradoxically _safest_ option. "It'll be another huge shock for him."

"Computer, shut up and get back to work," the Invader growled moodily, refusing to truly acknowledge the machine's words. He lowered his goggles and shoved on his working gloves, ignoring the new rush of pain that the gesture caused him. "Otherwise I will make sure that your Brain core will be the next thing to suffer from a very _painful_ shock."

The Computer pondered scoffing, but in the end it decided against it. Considering how deadly serious the Invader had sounded, it didn't want to risk having him carrying out his threat. Better not making a single sound and doing as it had been told, for this once.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

Dib let out a heavy sigh as he took his place next to Gaz at their usual table in the Skool cafeteria. She shot him a brief look and rolled her eyes at his pained expression, knowing that it would have led to another round of complaining. As if the endless monologue about how mean Zim had been the other night, when the alien had almost got the boy killed by smashing him in their front yard, hadn't been enough. She was already fed up with her brother's complaining about being unable to figure out what the Irken was working on in the Earth atmosphere.

She viciously stabbed a piece of pasta, as some sort of warning, but her sibling seemed not to even notice it and kept staring at his own food, gloomily. He didn't show any sign to be about start talking either, which was what surprised the girl the most. She waited for a few moments, just to be sure, and then returned her attention back to her lunch and game, with a hint of satisfaction. It was a _miracle_. It really seemed that this time she would have been spared from having to put up with Dib's nonsense. She was almost tempted to look _ecstatic_.

However, as the minutes passed and the older teen's expression remained the same, Gaz started to grow tired of seeing him pushing his food around with the corner of her eyes. She hated people who brooded. And sulking morons were the worst kind. A small growl escaped her lips and she put down her fork, elbowing the boy hard in the ribs, knowing that they already hurt from that mess with Tak's ship.

"Fine, Dib. What crawled up your ass and died this time?" She asked, not even trying to hide her annoyance. "And it has better be good, because otherwise you're going to die for having made me ask. Slowly and painfully."

The older teen let out a pained yelp as his bruised bones were abused once again and turned to shoot a wary glance to his sister. The words of protest that had come to his lips, however, died on his tongue at the sight of how serious and dark her expression was. For once it would have been better to forgo the part where he deluded himself into thinking that he had a chance at not ending up doing what she had ordered him.

"It's Zim," he grumbled, with just the slightest hint of reluctance.

Gaz rolled her eyes. "I thought I told you to make it worth my time, if you value your pitiful existence. So, tell me something I don't already know."

"You really sound like him at times, you know that?" Dib snapped back, regretting his words almost immediately as he saw her frown deepening. "Anyway. I still have no idea of what's going on in his green head. He started a fight with a bully this morning, during the break. He went to the jerk in front of everyone, peeled him off the poor kid who was being harassed and beat him up to a pulp, screaming something about how no one should dare to "humiliate the Mighty Zim". He and that guy have never even talked, I'm pretty sure. Then, once he was done, he just turned on his heels and marched away. Ah, and he shot me a murderous glare in the process, for no reason." He dropped his head in his hands. "Gaz, he's driving me nuts."

The girl blinked, remaining quiet for a moment. Her amber eyes, now half visible, held a certain amount of surprise. She could picture the odd scene easily. The bully pushing some random wimp around, the Irken coming up from behind him, grabbing him and kicking him into submission, yelling hysterically, and then departing without another word, leaving everyone too astonished to react, the bully included. She had to admit that it was a weird picture, especially considering that there was no good reason why Zim should have jumped in and defended a random human. Unless he had just been looking for someone he could unload his frustration on. _That_ was a feeling she could relate to, and very well.

"What did I tell you about letting him mess with your big head?" She pointed out in the end, since she didn't know what to say about the episode. Her eyes narrowed again, thoughtfully. "But if you really can't help it, then you should stop looking for a different explanation every time he goes crazy. Most likely, everything that happened after the radiations mess is connected and caused by one single thing. Something the moron clearly can't deal with. You know, the Occam's razor thing." She turned her gaze back on her game. "I bet that it's the same reason why he's seeing that counsellor. You should talk to her again."

"My head isn't big," he protested, mostly out of habit, since his focus was already on what his sister had said next. Could the girl be right? Could Zim's even more random behaviours have a common cause? Something big he hadn't been able to guess yet, even after all that time? It made sense, especially considering Ms Xander's involvement. And Gaz was right, the woman was probably the quickest way to get to the truth. However, it was a path he really didn't like and that he would have preferred not taking.

"She wants me to go and talk to her too, to be my counsellor," he reminded his sibling, making a face. "No way I'm trying that again. Remember how it ended with Dwicky? I had a very bad time dealing with the weapons the Plookesians gave Zim. And the man took my evidence who knows where in the universe! And he'd have probably got us both sectioned, even if he hadn't left with those aliens." He shook his head. "I'm done with counselling."

Gaz shrugged. "Whatever, Dib," she said with an annoyed scoff. The older teen was so childish at times. He gave up just because he was scared of being deemed insane again. She didn't see the problem. After all, everyone already believed that he was crazy. Moreover, she strongly doubted that Ms Xander would have jumped on the first alien ship she had run into, even if the Dwicky accident had repeated itself. The woman had looked smarter than that. "Good luck finding out what Zim's problem is."

She emitted another displeased sound and remained quiet for a few moments, but then her gaze moved up again and she eyed her brother carefully. "You know, if this woman has apparently been able to do something for that alien moron, she could help even _you_. She seems to have a thing and a talent for lost causes. She surely likes to pick them up as her patients." She pondered her next words for a second and then added: "And Dad would be glad to know that you're finally starting to "admit your problem". It might get him off your back for a while. If you aren't too stupid to see what I mean."

Dib studied her expression in return, forcing himself to consider her words despite his instinctive reluctance. Once again, she had a point. When didn't she, dammit? It was a very annoying, even if at times useful habit of hers and he was beginning to dislike it, lately. "I'll think about it," he conceded, picking up his fork.

The girl didn't waste her breath with an answer, but she saw him starting to eat with the corner of her eye and noticed that his expression was more calculating and less gloomy. Good. Now he would have had something to think about, some stupid plan to elaborate. No more annoying sulking. She could go back to ignoring him and his green problem.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

"So, you really aren't going to tell me what's up with you, Zim?" Ms Xander asked, biting back the umpteenth sigh. There had been times when her patient had been anything but forthcoming with his answers, but that day they were already twenty minutes into the session and all she had got out of him were monosyllabic replies and shrugs. "They told me what happened two days ago, with that student you beat up. He's still at the hospital, are you aware of it?"

Zim kept avoiding her eyes, gaze fixed on the wall at his right, arms and legs crossed. It was the most closed posture he had ever showed her. It wasn't completely new, because he had used that attitude the first times she had asked him about his core issue, before he decided to tell her his story, but even in those occasions he hadn't looked so _bitter_. Now he was angry, in a dark, agitated way and he refused to tell a single word about what was going on.

The woman pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment. She had been able to prevent him from getting suspended by saying that, in her professional opinion, it would have just caused the episode to repeat itself, but now she wasn't anymore sure that it had been the smartest choice. Her patient was a walking bomb, ready to explode, and so perhaps it would have been better to leave him at home, to cool down and work on his project for a few days.

"Zim. Talk to me. This is serious," she tried again, in a firmer tone. A thought touched her mind. She had noticed that he tended to do everything she asked, or almost, when she told him that it was his duty. It was most likely another effect of the conditioning he had received from his former "leaders", even if that didn't explain completely why he felt obliged to obey to her too. She didn't like to use that advantage and she almost never did, but this was some sort of emergency. Her voice changed into a more commanding voice. "Zim. I said talk to me."

Despite himself, the Invader moved his eyes from the wall to the counsellor, unable to resist the command implied in her words. Damned his PAK instincts. She was still taller and in a higher social position than him and, even if she was human, that was too relevant to ignore. "I thought that I was the one to decide what we talked about and when we did it," he pointed out harshly, but then dropped his gaze. "That filthy pig deserved what he got. He was pushing around the other human, telling him that he was a useless nothing and that he should have just done as he had been told. And the other worm children were happy about what Zim did, so I don't see the problem."

Ms Xander lifted her eyes towards the ceiling. She wanted to point out that the fact that the boy he had hurt was a bully wasn't so important, but she refrained. It would have just caused him to shut down again. "This isn't what I want to know, Zim," she pressed, more gently this time. "You told me yourself that you don't mingle in the other students' "pathetic lives". Your words. So, tell me what has caused you to change your mind and step in."

The Irken's expression darkened. He should have expected that his answer wouldn't have satisfied her. Perhaps he had better tell her and end it, so that she would have stopped bugging him. He didn't have time for her human useless fussing. He had work to do. Between his plans and Purple's tasks he had his hands full. The thought of his most recent orders made him tighten his fists. Those were the problem. He refused to humiliate himself for the Tallest's amusement. He had done it so many times in the past, without realising it, but now that he knew, he just couldn't. Or better, he could and would for the same reason why he had given in and answered the questions, but it was going to be much harder than it had been when he was still oblivious.

"Purple called me a few nights ago," he mumbled in the end, voice unusually quiet, but still thick with reluctance. He kept avoiding looking at the woman, though, the sick, humiliated feeling that had stayed with him since the transmission spreading a little deeper in his spooch. "He gave me a…task, one that Zim doesn't want to do because it's _degrading_. Don't ask me what it is, because I won't tell."

The counsellor's expression immediately softened once again. That explained _everything_. Her patient's frustration, the need to unload it on everyone who reminded him of the person who had caused his distress. "Zim, you don't have to do it if you don't want to," she tried stretching a hand out towards him, as if to physically offer him the permission to ignore whatever order he had received. "We talked about this. You're your own leader, remember? You don't have to listen to them because they're the ones who rejected you. You owe them nothing."

Zim shook his head. "My banishment isn't official yet. I must follow my orders and pretend to be working on my mission till it will be," he shot back, stubbornly, but there was a hint of hesitation in his voice. That small doubt, however, disappeared completely as he went on. "They are still my Tallest! Zim cannot disobey a direct order!"

A growl escaped his lips. She couldn't understand. He _physically_ couldn't disobey. His PAK wouldn't have allowed it, not when he was consciously doing it. In the past he had been able to disregard a few orders because he had been persuaded that he was doing what the Empire and his leaders wanted from him, like when he had quitted his exile on Foodcourtia. Now, it was different. His awareness of what the truth was had changed everything. His view of reality, his way of dealing with it, even his body chemistry. He was suspended between the real world and the fake delusion he had lived in till before the revelation. Both realities had their hooks into him and were pulling, threatening to rip his mind and being apart. Until he wouldn't have been officially marked as an exile, he would have been stuck there, in the middle, unable to really pursue the new life Ms Xander had tried to draw out for him. He wasn't in a real hurry to be set "free", though. After all, even then, when judgement moment would have come, he still wouldn't have known what to do with himself. He had been a fool to believe that he could have found an answer, to believe that he could have been something different just because he _wanted_ to be.

"But you aren't carrying on your main mission anymore, even if those were your orders," the counsellor attempted to reason again, even if she knew what the answer to those words would have been. The two situations were different, she could tell without the teen spelling it out aloud for her. However, she was at loss of what to do and she hated seeing him so torn.

"Those orders were never real!" Zim hissed as expected, his violet eyes shooting to meet hers. He felt a spark of dark satisfaction noticing the brief hint of fear in her expression when their gazes met. He knew how he had to look now. Shaking with barely repressed anger, fake irises shining with danger just as his real own, posture tense, pink, sharp teeth gritted. In one word, _inhuman_. "That mission was a _lie_. Just as everything else. These orders, they are real. They are a masked request for me to humiliate myself, but Purple meant every word of what he asked. He is my Tallest and Zim will carry out his task. As always."

He stood up. He wasn't sure anymore of whom he was trying to convince. Her or himself. However, he knew one thing. He wanted out, he wanted to go back to his Station and work on his machine before plotting on how to fulfil the hateful demand he had been made. He couldn't stay there, with her, among those filthy humans. The impulse to wreck their weak bodies apart grew stronger and stronger with every passing minute, just as the sense of not belonging did. That was another foolish delusion that he had allowed himself to consider. That he could have stayed there, on that ball of dirt that should have inspired him nothing but hatred and disgust, when he wasn't even welcomed on his own planet. His fury flared up, so much that he felt like his skin melting under its heat. His Tallest were right. He _was_ a stupid fool.

"Zim, where are you going?" Ms Xander instantly asked, alarmed, getting on her feet in turn. "We aren't done yet. Listen, we'll talk about something else. I'm sorry if I pressed you. I didn't mean to upset you. I was just trying to help." She lifted her hands slightly. "Why don't you tell me about your project again? Or we could talk a bit about what you'll do once your…exile will be official. What do you say?"

The Irken shook his head. "No, Acelynn-doc. We're done for this time. Zim is going…back to his base," he stated in the same harsh tone he had just used. He couldn't call the fake house "home", even if it was what it had sort of started to feel like in the last four years. He turned his back to her, trying not to start shaking. "There isn't anything else to talk about." Bitterness flooded in his tone once again, cold and cutting. "And there will nothing left for me to do once I will be officially declared a Defective and banished. I don't belong where I come from. I never did. And I don't belong here. Zim doesn't belong anywhere, with anyone. Once my Tallest will have rejected me, I will just blow up this filthy ball of dirt and be done with it. Be done with everything."

The woman made to follow him, but the threatening glare he shot her made her stop her tracks. "And once you'll…have destroyed the world? What then?" She still forced herself to ask. Zim wouldn't have attacked her, would he? He shouldn't have, it wasn't in the profile she had traced for him. But then again, the person she was seeing now was sharper, more dangerous, bloodthirsty almost, and more merciless than the teen she had been dealing with for over two months. Had she underestimated his violent potential?

"Then…" The Invader started to answer, but his voice trailed off immediately. Even his anger deflated a bit, overwhelmed by the emptiness that had become a constant, unwanted companion for him. He had no idea of what he would have done after that. There would have been nothing left at all.

"It doesn't matter. It won't matter," he opted to reply, finding that he was being brutally sincere, as he had rarely been in his existence. "We are done."

Without waiting for an answer, he covered the few steps that separated him from the door and stormed out of the office, without looking back. However, he had hardly walked a few metres in the corridor when he collided against someone, sending them both on the floor for the violence of the impact. His fake violet eyes shot up, pure fury lighting them up, but the emotions faltered, even if just for a second, as he found himself staring at his nemesis.

Dib rubbed his back where it had impacted against the ground. He had been pondering Gaz's suggestion for over a day now and he had come to the conclusion that she was right. If he wanted to reach the bottom of that mess he had to put aside his worries and reluctance and choose the smart move. Which, in that case, meant talking to his rival's counsellor. He had been so lost in his thoughts, as he made his way to the office, busy trying to persuade himself not to chicken out, that he hadn't noticed the distressed alien rushing towards him until they had collided into each other.

"Zim!" He exclaimed, recognising the Irken, a mix of surprise and confusion in his voice. Irritation followed them quite quickly though. "Space scum, what are you even…"

He cut himself off as he noticed the look on the other's face. Aside from the evident anger that burnt in them, the Invader's eyes were back being as empty and gloomy as they had been during the first weeks after the radiations issue. He suddenly found himself being glad that his nemesis was wearing his contact lenses. He wasn't sure that he would have been able to hold his magenta orbs without getting swallowed by the void in them in that moment. Against his will, concern and apprehension blossomed in his chest, replacing the annoyance. "Zim, are you…"

"Don't talk to me, filthy beast!" The alien snarled, jumping on his feet. "Don't come near Zim, don't try to stand in my way! Do you understand, Earth monkey? Don't cross Zim or I will wipe you away with the rest of your inferior pathetic race!" As he yelled the last word, his PAK legs shot out from behind his back and, in the blink of an eye, he was gone, leaving behind a stunned human and a gaping hole into the air duct above his head.

Dib started at the opening, too astonished to be able to do anything else. He was so shocked that he couldn't even move. He hadn't seen Zim so angry in a long time and he had no idea of what could have caused such an outburst. However, he was sure that something bad, the Earth devastation kind of bad, would have happened soon, if he hadn't stepped in and stopped whatever was up with his nemesis before it was too late. He bit back a tired sigh. Now he really couldn't afford not to talk to Ms Xander anymore.

* * *

Hi guys!

I'm so sorry for taking this long, but the last month has been so busy for me...And things will still be very busy from now on too, so I might not update as regularly as I used to. I'm going to try to have the next chapter up asap anyway, though, I've already started working on it. As for future updates, they'll probably take at least two weeks each. When possible, I'll try to speed it up, but it will really depend on my schedule, which will be far too tight unfortunately. In the meanwhile, I want to thank you for your patience and for sticking with me!

I'm going to be brief about this because I'm tired and I want to get some more writing done at some point today! So, once again I had different scenes happening in different times through the chapter, even if this times the events cover up a time period of just a week or so, and not two months like the last time. And, as I've probably been telling you already, things went south again. I must confess that I have a thing for writing this darker, angry side of Zim. He is the type of character who can get super creepy and violent and that has a lot of appeal for ^^" But I won't get too ethically dark this, so don't worry! And yes, I left you with a bit of a cliffhanger because there's a huge conversation between Acelynn and Dib going to happen next and...you'll see! But I promise, as I said already, that I'll be quicker with the next chapter!

As always, I want to take a moment to thank all the people who have been following this story of mine and especially the ones who have taken the time to leave me comments. You guys there, your opinions really mean the world to me, so for the umpteenth time, thank you from the bottom of my heart! I'll never be able to tell how much I appreciate your reviews!

I also want to give a special shotout today to my friend **RissyNicole** who's such a wonderfully _talented_ writer, who's always so patient with me and who never fails to offer me amazing comments even when I keep her waiting forever on my side ^^" Thank you. I'm so glad we met!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

 **CawAreYouDoin:** Thank you for keeping on reading despite all your engagements and school work! I truly appreciate the interest! And I get it, it's really hard to review every chapter of a story, especially when you're busy with everything else, so don't worry! And I always try to reply to my reviewers. It's the least I can do for whoever takes the time to leave me a comment!  
This said, I'm so glad to hear that you've enjoyed everything that has happened so far :D I try to keep the characters true to themselves as much as possible, even while I'm making them undergoing a growth and a change and it's good to know that you think that I'm managing in well enough ^^ And I think I know what you're referring too, but for the record I never read that webcomic xD Just heard about it. But I gotta say that the particular kind of relationship they depict there, among the others, does fit ZaDr quite well, so I guess I might have taken a bit of inspiration from it's definition, even without knowing the fandom xD  
Thanks again for commenting despite the late hour! I really appreciated it! And loved you comment too. Like the couch xD

 **Guest:** Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it ^^


	24. Chapter 24

Ms. Xander remained frozen in her spot for thirty good seconds after Zim had stormed out of her office, still shocked by the violence of his reaction. His unusual violet eyes had pinned her in her spot, making her unable to move and filling her with an irrational fear, the kind of emotions one experienced in front of something unknown and dangerous. Which was a silly thought, since her patient, while unstable and with a very small to inexistent conscience, was still just a teenage boy. Or at least, he should have been just that.

When she finally managed to recover from her shock, she hurried out of the room, determined to follow the teen and try to at least calm him down, but the face she found in the corridor, while familiar, wasn't the one she had been looking for.

"Dib!" She exclaimed, surprised to see the scythe-haired boy there. "Did you…run into Zim?"

"Yeah, I did. Quite literally," Dib commented with a small scoff, accepting the hand she was offering him to help him back on his feet. "What happened? I haven't seen him so…furious in a while." He wasn't sure that it was the right way to describe the look he had spotted on his rival's face. The anger had been there, of course, but even the wrath that had been contorting the alien's features paled in comparison with how deep the emptiness in his eyes had been.

"I'm afraid it's my fault," the woman sighed, running a hand in her blond hair. She closed her eyes. Who knows where Zim had gone. Hopefully home, as he had stated, where he shouldn't have been able to cause too much harm, to others or to himself. Perhaps she should let him be, for now, and hope that he didn't do anything extreme.

"Listen, do you want to come in?" She offered, nodding towards her office. "I don't like to discuss my patients in the corridors. And, if you're still considering helping me out as I asked you last time, this would be a _great_ moment to accept. As unprofessional as it might sound, I'm a bit at loss of what to do about Zim, after how this latest conversion of ours has ended."

"I…uh, actually I was coming to see you," the teen admitted not without a hint of nervousness. However, he didn't hesitate for more than a split second before preceding her inside the room. "It's about the conversation we had last time. There's something I really need to ask you."

The counsellor closed the door behind her back, walking around the chair he had let himself fall in, the same that Zim usually occupied, to be able to slide past her desk and take her own seat. "It's a bit small," she said, sounding almost apologetical. "I hope you aren't claustrophobic. A couple of my patients are and so I'm forced to use spare classrooms for my sessions with them. I tried to tell the headmaster about the issue, but he ignored all of my requests for a more suitable space. I guess I should have expected as much from public school, shouldn't I?" She rolled her eyes slightly, before dismissing the thought. At times she truly wondered if people in that place purposely tried to make her job harder. "Anyway, what is it that you wanted to ask me?"

"I'm fine. I don't mind…closed small places," Dib promptly answered with the hint of a grin. His investigations had led him into much more crumpled spaces, and dirtier ones too. Not to mention the few times his rival had locked him in cages or in one of his glass tanks. His expression then turned a bit more serious. "I know that you have…obligations because of your profession and that you can't speak about what your patients tell you and all, but this sort of is an emergency. And you might have noticed that Zim isn't exactly your average…uh, person."

He had been tempted to say "human", but in the end he had chosen a more neutral definition. He knew that, by the end of their conversation, she would have had her own very clear idea of how crazy he was, but he didn't want her to start looking at him oddly since the very beginning. "I _really_ need to know what's up with him," he resumed, trying to convey as much urgency as possible. "You told me try and talk to him and I did, but I haven't got a word out of him. Not that I expected anything else. But, maybe, if I knew what his big issue is, perhaps I could do better."

Ms. Xander sighed again, joining her hands under her chin. "So, you want to know what has triggered the sudden changes in Zim's behaviour pattern, what's affecting him so deeply. Correct?" She questioned, even if she already knew the answer. "Dib, I'm not allowed to divulge this kind of information, especially considering that Zim has explicitly told me that I mustn't. As long as I don't have the proof that he is a danger to himself or to others, I can't speak of that. And, even in that case, I'd be allowed to report it only to the authorities and to his closest relatives." She lifted a hand, to prevent him from protesting. " _But_ , if you assure me that this is a _real_ emergency and if you accept to have a conversation with me, I might end up…slipping and saying something I shouldn't have." She grinned slightly. "As the Latins said, to err is human."

The teen, who had started to frown during the first part of her speech, suddenly found himself smiling back. The woman wasn't as bad as he had anticipated, for a counsellor. "Alright, I'll talk with you." He shrugged, trying to play off the reluctance that he still felt, despite having already made up his mind. "You told me that it could do me some good, so I guess I could give it a try."

"Excellent!" Acelynn nodded, looking pleased with herself. What she had agreed to do wasn't completely ethical nor legal, but, as the boy had stated, Zim was a unique patient, who needed to be handled with unique methods, even unconventional ones. Besides, she had hoped to get the chance to talk to Dib again too and perhaps manage to persuade him to let her help out. That was her chance to kill two birds with one stone. "Since we're talking about Zim, I'll be curious to hear about your relationship with him more in-depth. I've heard his side of the story several times, but I'm just as interested in yours."

Dib was caught a bit off guard by the question, even if his shoulders relaxed a bit more after a moment. He had expected her to dive straight into his business, while instead she had chosen to stay on topic. Perhaps it was just a move to make him feel more at ease, some sort of psychologist's trick. If it was, it was working already.

"We're…sworn enemies, as he told you. Rivals, nemeses. Pick the term you like best," he started, a bit unsure of how to sum up his and the Invader's relationship, especially without mentioning the alien thing. "His aim is to fulfil his mission and mine is to stop his plans. We stand on completely opposite sides and it's been like that since day one." He still remembered very clearly the day when the Irken had first been introduced in his class. He had seen right past his disguise, read his dark intentions in his fake violet eyes. "But soon I've started to realise that it wasn't all."

He paused for a moment. Even at the very start of their war, he had been aware that, despite the hate and the obvious contempt they had for each other, those weren't the only emotions and thoughts that they shared. Dib had spent a long time denying any other Zim-related feeling, and the alien had done the same thing, but as the time passed denial had become impossible and _stupid_ too. As uncomfortable as it might be, the truth was there, so clear that a blind man could have seen it, and had to be acknowledged.

"Zim is the only person in my life who has always taken me seriously, like _really_ seriously. When he looks at me, I know that, under the insults and the name calling, he _sees_ me, like no one else does," he went on, playing with the hem of his shirt. He had never told those things to anyone, not so openly and descriptively. He had mentioned something to Gaz, but he had never really dared to talk at length about the subject. "He recognises that I have potential. To stop him, to do things no one else thinks I'm capable off. He doesn't see some dumb, crazy kid when he looks at me. He sees a worthy opponent, even if he'd claim to his death that I'm a stupid inferior pain in his ass and nothing else. But I know the truth, because he needs me to keep…things interesting. And the feeling is pretty much mutual. I can't tell anymore if it's a good or a bad thing."

The counsellor let him talk, without interrupting and just nodding slightly from time to time. She had taken her notebook out and had scribbled down a few words, but for the rest her eyes had stayed fixed on the teen, attentively watching him.

"I see. Zim told me something very similar, even if in different terms. He said that you're the only one who takes him seriously and who pays him the attention he deserves. That you are…What were the words? Ah, yes. "The less hateful filthy human on this planet". And then there's the whole nemesis affair I told you about already." She tapped her pen against her chin. "So, would you say that he's important too, in your life? Even if you aren't friends? Not in the conventional meaning of the term, at least."

Dib almost wanted to laugh at the question. Zim was pretty much the _centre_ of his life. He had been for four years by now. "Yeah, as much as I don't like it, he is," he nodded, making a face, but the annoyed sentiment in his expression wasn't heartfelt. "I mean, aside from him, I've only got Gaz, my younger sister, and my Dad. I guess you've heard of him." He was sure she had. Everyone knew Professor Membrane. "And well...Dad isn't really around. He's super busy with his job and I think he likes it better. Don't get me wrong, he loves us, but…Some people just aren't cut out to be parents. He's one of those people. He tries. He makes sure that we have all we need, he has one evening per year labelled as parent-children night he never cancels, no matter what might happen. He used to play with us when we were younger too and he tries to be around for breakfast, at least in the weekend. But, mostly, he's not there."

He sighed, rubbing a hand on his face. "I don't hate him for that," he added, sounding almost tired. "I do understand, I've always had. My problems with him start only when he tries to force things on me. Like, he wants me to give up my passion for the paranormal and stick to "real science". To be _exactly_ like him. And that's…unfair. He doesn't really _force_ me, but he calls me insane and all that stuff and keeps saying: "Son, I hope that one day you'll come to your senses and abandon the path of this crazy parascience to acknowledge what is really important". Or something along those lines. It's…annoying. To say the least. And it hurts too, even if I try not to let it get to me."

"While I'm sure too that your father is really just trying to look out for you and your future, I agree that his methods aren't the best ones to employ, especially with someone as young as you are," the woman claimed when he stopped rambling and looked up at her. "You should be free to pursue whatever hobby or passion you like, Dib. And I'm not saying it just because it's some psychobabble I'm trained to say. It's the truth. You're old enough to start making your own choices and, if working with your father isn't what you think will make you happy, then you shouldn't. It's up to you whether to change your mind about it or not, but you shouldn't do it just to please him." She smiled encouragingly. "You know, my parents were appalled when I told them that I wanted to study psychology. They wanted me to get a degree in medicine, or something more… _real_. You can tell that I didn't listen, and now I'm perfectly satisfied with what I do."

"Thanks. I think," the teen said, feeling slightly unsettled by the reply he had got. He hadn't been sure of what to expect in answer to his explanation, but surely not for her to agree. No one had ever sided him on the matter. They had always told him that he should follow his father's wishes, even if some had contested the man's way to impose them. It was nice to have someone on his side. "I mean, I know that, but hearing it from someone else is better."

"You're very welcome, then," Ms. Xander chuckled. The boy had looked slightly lost at her words and she could tell that they had caught him off guard. Apparently he had been extremely sincere when he had stated that Zim was the only one who took him seriously. He clearly wasn't used to it. "What about your sister?"

Dib blinked. "Gaz? Uh, she's…complicated." The term didn't even start to describe his sibling, but he wouldn't have known what other word to use. "She's always been super tough and introverted and she seems to care about nothing but her videogames. Which isn't true, because she's really attached to Dad too. And to pizza. Still, she's a lone wolf, for the most part. She likes being left on her own and can't stand whoever dares to get in her way. She's…scary, and a lot of people think so. Even Zim is scared of her. Also, she hates my guts. Now a little less, but when we were kids, she really couldn't stand me. I guess it was, among the other things, because of my contrasts with Dad. She blamed me for ruining the little time we spent with him with our fights and maybe she even thought that I was one of the reasons why he was so rarely around."

He dropped his eyes, a little dejected. He had come close to believe it too, to wonder if things would have been different if he had done what the Professor wanted him to. After all, the one time he had stopped chasing Zim and worked with him, the man had suddenly become a big part of his life. However, in the aftermath, he had realised that it had been because _he_ had become part of his parent's work and not because Membrane had suddenly started to want to be around.

"She changed her mind about that, I think," he resumed, shoving those gloomy thoughts away. "She still dislikes me, but she's also nicer. In her Gaz-like way. She stands up for me, from time to time, something she didn't do before. She protects me from bullies, sort of, and she's teaching me to fight, even if that implies mostly her beating me up with my consent more than anything else." He chuckled slightly, to cover the small uneasy shiver that had run down his spine. "I think that we're finally starting to see eye to eye, at least in part. Even if she still thinks that I'm dumb and pathetic." He made a face. "She does sound a lot like Zim when she says that. But she's much scarier than him. Most of the times, at least."

"So, she's one for tough love. A literal one I dare to say," the woman commented, gaining a nod of agreement. If Gaz and his father were all the boy had in his life, it was quite understandable why he had grown so attached to Zim. "It can't be easy to get along with her."

"It's not. Like, at all," Dib admitted. However, then he grinned a little. "But, as I said, things are getting better. I've always loved her, because she's my little sister, but in the last year or so, I started to actually like her as a person. I admire her, because she can stand up for herself and not give a damn about whatever people think or say about her. I wish I was a little bit like her at times. My life would be much easier. I think that she's been trying to teach me her attitude, in the last months, but I haven't made much progress for now. I don't think that I could ever reach her level of indifference. And, honestly, I don't want to. Someone has to care."

"Someone has to indeed, or the world would be doomed. But usually it's much easier and…convenient, in a way, to just think about yourself," the counsellor pointed out. She eyed him meaningfully. "Your choice is a brave one, Dib. Especially considering that you're walking this path almost completely by yourself. You should be proud of it."

The teen felt his face warming up slightly at the words. This felt even better than when he had thought that Dwicky believed him about Zim being an alien. Because the woman wasn't just validating his beliefs as the man had done, she was validating _him_ as a person. "I…I…" He stuttered, struggling to get a hold of himself, but failing for a moment. He cleared his throat. "I am. Well, most days at least. Even if at times it gets…hard. Especially when everyone is calling you insane because of the same things that make me want to care. It sucks. It makes me almost…" _Want to let Zim wipe out humanity_. "…want to give up. But I know that I can't."

"Good thing you have your nemesis there to keep you fighting then," she joked, unaware of how deeply right she was. She scribbled down one last word on her notepad and then set her pen down. "Back to Zim, since we've mentioned him. You were saying that he's not just your enemy, considering how much he matters to you. Even against your will."

Dib looked away at her first statement. She struck the right keys in him even when she wasn't trying. She made him want to talk and talk, to pour out everything he had kept bottled up. Maybe it was just because, for the first time in ages, he was being allowed to let it out, while having someone there who listened to him and was interested in what he had to say. Or perhaps was this woman a mind-reader? Some sort of psychic, exploiting her mind powers to condition him? Maybe he should investigate her too. It would have explained why Zim had decided to keep seeing her. Or, perhaps, his rival had just been desperate for a friendly attentive ear as he was.

"I don't really know what else to say about me and him. _How_ to say it," he grumbled, opening his arms a bit. "He drives me crazy. With his stupid talks, his crazy plans, his randomness. And in the last two months or so, he's been blurring the lines even more. He switches from acting super mean to being straight out sadistic to acting almost _friendly_. We hung out a few times, he hung out with Gaz too and we've spent time the three of us together. He even ate lunch with us, while he usually makes sure to chase away whoever tries to sit at his table. He protected me from this guy who was about to beat me up." The Irken had literally torn Louis into pieces, even if he had had his own reasons for that. "Then, the next day, he goes back calling me names and hurting me himself." He shook his head. "He even gave me a gift once. Something he made with his hands." He shouldn't be mentioning it, because back then the Invader had been under the effect of the radiations, but he found that he couldn't stop his words. "And there's that one time when we…uh…"

His face heated up, this time unpleasantly, with both shame and embarrassment, and he finally cut himself off, but he was aware that it was too late to cover up for his almost slip. The blush on his face surely spoke in volumes of what he wasn't saying.

Ms. Xander blinked, caught off guard by how abruptly the teen had stopped mid rambling. The tendency to let the words flood freely out of his mouth was definitely something he and Zim had in common. However, right now she was more interested in the look on his face and in the redness of his cheeks. That was new and a bit unexpected. She had asked her patient once if he had romantic feelings for his rival and what she had got had been a horrified shriek and a confusing explanation about how the possessiveness he showed was related to hate. Dib himself hadn't given any hint in that sense during their brief, previous talk, but now she was starting to wonder again.

"That one time when you did what?" She pressed, but she kept her tone gentle and encouraging.

Dib's face became even warmer and he started to worry that it would have exploded if he hadn't done something about it. "We…We k…Ugh, we kissed, alright!" He finally blurted out, fingers tightening around the hems of his trench coat. That was one of the most embarrassing situations in which he had ever found himself. "No, wait, let me rephrase it. _He_ kissed me. He took me…uh, stargazing while he was…working on one of his projects and then he suddenly started rambling about how he wanted to _conquer_ me." It was pretty much what had happened, with the omission of the fact that they had gone to space. "He was… _intoxicated_." True enough. "And then the next thing I know is that I'm pressed up against a wall and he's…trying to devour my mouth." Perhaps he could have been a bit less graphic with his choice of words. "And I…I just let him."

The counsellor was silent for a moment. Zim had never mentioned such an episode to her, he hadn't even _implied_ that something like that had happened, and the weird teen implied a lot of things, most of which she still hadn't figured out. However, she could see the reflection of her patient's possessiveness in the brief description of the facts she had been given.

"What happened then?" She asked, deciding that making any comment would have been counterproductive. Dib already looked as if he was about to freak out.

"He…He released me and I told him that he wasn't himself and that was why he had done and said those things," the teen answered, swallowing a bit. He still couldn't believe that he had confessed what had happened that time. To a woman who was a complete stranger. He hadn't even mentioned it to Gaz. "He agreed with me and we decided not to mention it ever again, to pretend it never happened. And we did. He joked about it once and I teased back, but that was all. And, if you ask me, it's for the best. It's not like it meant something. Not for real."

The woman hummed to herself, looking at him contemplative for a couple of seconds, examining her options. She had the feeling that, if she had questioned him directly on the episode, he would have shut down, so she needed to go around it first. "I see," she spoke, dragging the words a bit. "Tell me something, Dib. Do you like guys or girls? Or both? Or…none?"

Dib was once again caught slightly off guard by the question. "I…Uh." What was he supposed to say? He wasn't even sure himself, and that was bad considering that he was about to turn fifteen and he had hardly spared a thought on the subject, even despite the hormones in his growing body starting to demand attention.

"Honestly, I've always been too busy doing…other things to care." Like chasing after Zim's crazy plans for world destruction. "There was this one time, last summer, when the robot that Dad had charged with doing the shopping bought beer instead of soda and Gaz dared me to have a drinking contest with her and we ended up both drunk off our asses. And, out of the blue, she started making comments about how pretty Zita had become and how cute Gretchen looked now that her braces have finally fixed her face and she doesn't look like a horse anymore. I was astonished because I didn't know that she was interested girls, or in anyone in general, but I agreed, because Zita has become _really_ pretty, even if she's still a jerk, and Gretchen looks like another person. A good-looking person. Then Gaz made a comment about an older guy she had met in detention, saying that he's handsome too. I saw him too, a couple of times. And she's _so_ right about him. But that was all. Words and thoughts." He rubbed the back of his head. "Normally, I hardly notice."

Ms. Xander made another humming sound, this time a bit more knowingly. "Sexuality isn't a very discussed subject at home, is it?"

He shook his head. "Not really. I mean, when Gaz and I were ten, Dad told us about reproduction, but strictly from a scientific point of view. Then last year, when I turned fourteen, he asked me if I needed to be given "The Talk". I think he was more relieved than I was when I told him no." He shrugged, trying to cover up his uneasiness. "It's not like I don't know anything about…sex. I heard things, saw people making out at school and stuff, but just…I've got better things to do. And a lot of more important ones to worry about." Like the alien threatening their planet. "Is it…weird?"

"No, Dib. Absolutely not. Everyone should be allowed to discover their sexuality, or lack of it, at their own time and pace. If someone tells you differently, they're wrong," she instantly reassured him, in a firm tone. She didn't want to cause him to have a crisis over something he hadn't deemed important till that very moment. Especially because there was no need for it. "Now. You said that you agreed with your sister that those three people were attractive. Objectively we could say, since you don't fancy any of them, do you?" She waited for him to shake his head. "Alright. What about Zim then? What do you think of him, aesthetically?"

Flashes of green skin, long antennae and impossibly large magenta orbs flashed in Dib's mind. A hard body made of sharp lines and stinging angles, thin but much stronger than it looked. Three-fingered clawed hands, long, serpentine, ridged tongue and pinkish, razor-sharp teeth. Somehow humanoid but still completely _alien_ shapes. "Zim is… _weird_ ," he ended up saying, unable to come up with a better answer. "I mean, I always say he's a hideous space bug, but, all considered…he's not _that_ hideous."

He found the Irken fascinating because he wasn't human. His foreign forms at times were hard on the eye, especially when he wasn't wearing his disguise, but Dib honestly liked it better when he was allowed to see his alien looks in all their glory. They reminded him that he wasn't crazy. However, there was also something _captivating_ in the way Zim's magenta eyes caught the light or darkened when they were fighting and in how his antennae moved, expressing emotions and conveying thoughts in ways he still wasn't done deciphering. You could come to appreciate the particular hue of green of his skin, once you got used to its unusual colour. Also, the fact that the alien's body had taken, as he had grown taller, a shape that vaguely reminded of an hourglass, with shoulders and hips looking wider than they actually were because of the thinness of his torso's middle section, was odd but enticing.

He blinked, realising that he had just spaced out while mentally cataloguing the Invader's body in a way that, while not sexual or romanticised, couldn't have been labelled as strictly scientific and impersonal either. A bit of heat rushed back to his face and he cleared his throat. Damn, he would have had a hard time meeting his nemesis's eyes for a while after that conversation.

"Can we…Can we talk about something else?" He almost pleaded, looking back at the counsellor. He didn't know what kind of conclusions she had come to and he didn't really want to know, just as he didn't wish to draw any conclusions by himself. He just wanted to pretend that the talk hadn't happened, just as his kiss with the Irken. "This is making me really uncomfortable."

Ms. Xander scrutinised the boy for a few more moments before slowly nodding. She would have liked to explore the subject more, to see if there was actual attraction under the morbid interest that Dib seemed to have for Zim or if it was just part of their weird relationship, but she could recognise when she was going too far. She would have tried it another time, if the teen had agreed to come and see her again.

"Of course," she granted with a small smile, waving a hand. "I won't force you to talk about anything you don't want to discuss. For example, Zim took almost two months before telling me about the root of his recent behaviours."

The embarrassment instantly disappeared from Dib's features at the last statement and his eyes became more attentive. _Finally_. He was about to get the information for which he had endured all that questioning. Even if, deep down, he had to admit that it hadn't been anywhere as horrible as he had expected. On the contrary, it had been easy and almost…good for him.

"He's extremely stubborn and always does things his own way, even when his way is anything but the smart one," he agreed, hoping that she would have gone on without beating around the bush. "He only cares for his mission and the only ones he listens to, always in his own way, are his leaders. And himself of course."

The woman nodded. That was exactly the answer she needed to slip in the information that the teen had requested. "Yes, exactly. And his relationship with his "Tallest" is one of the things that really worries me, as I already mentioned to you," she explained with a small sigh. "It's as if they and the tasks they gave him dictate not just what he does with his life, but also his whole being. As if his mission defined what and _whom_ he is. He's absolutely persuaded of this. But accidentally finding out that everything you've always believed in, that everything you've been told, that everything you _have_ is a lie, a bad joke to get rid of you…Such a thing can crush the steadiest of beliefs."

Dib hadn't honestly known what to expect when he had first decided to investigate the matter. He had no idea of what Zim's problem might have been, but the counsellor's words were the last thing he had thought he would have heard, a possibility he hadn't even considered. He stared at her, taken aback, as all the pieces slid into their place. The Irken had found out that his mission wasn't real, that he hadn't been sent on Earth to conquer the planet, but to be banished there, far away from his people and home planet. It was no wonder that he had been walking around looking so empty and lost. He had been stripped of everything that mattered, of everything he had and had thought of being. He had kept simulating his mission because invading was the only thing he felt he should and could do, but he had never carried out his plans for real because there would have been no one to come and claim the planet he had subjugated. So the act had become an endless repetition of something that had been just a sick joke and deceit in the first place.

The words that Zim had spoken during the first fake successful attempt to destroy the Earth echoed in his mind. _How does it feel, seeing your life being smashed before your eyes? Watching everything you have ever believed in turning into a cruel lie?_ The Invader had been talking about himself, had forced him to experience, even if just temporarily, the same, bottomless desperation that had been devouring him. And now a lot of other things that had happened during the years made sense now. Why the Irken Armada had never come near the Earth, even when the alien had called for it. Why Tak first and her ship later had kept accusing Zim of being a fraud. Why his nemesis's technology seemed to be outdated and bit lame, compared to how advanced his people were supposed to be, exclusion made for the devices he built with his own hands. It also explained why the Invader kept flinching and reacting badly every time he doubted his worth. The teen felt uneasy knowing that he had, unconsciously, rubbed salt into an open, copiously bleeding wound.

He frowned deeply. There were a few things he still didn't get, but it was most likely because he didn't have all the necessary information yet. First of all, he knew that the Tallest weren't very fond of the Irken, he had gathered that much from the very few times he had seen the three of them interacting, but sentencing him to a lifetime of exile on a planet he positively loathed seemed exaggerated. And what were the reasons behind such a choice? What had Zim done to deserve it? He wasn't the most capable of invaders, obviously, or, rather ironically, he hadn't been till learning the truth had triggered something inside him, causing him to start using his full potential. Also, the two taller aliens clearly had a personal dislike for his nemesis. But that couldn't be all, could it?

The teen raised his eyes back on Ms. Xander, but her expression told him that she wouldn't have volunteered any other information on the topic. It was up to him to fill the gaps, which also meant that his work with her was done. He stood up. "Thanks for the insight. It's been…enlightening," he stated, with a small nod. And it had really been. Now he needed to find a way to force Zim to talk to him. Easier to be said than to be done. "And for the talk. I was wrong, Acelynn. Not all counsellors and psychologists are as bad as the ones I met. But I really have to go now."

The woman simply nodded. She had seen his eyes lighting up with understanding, before his expression had turned deeply thoughtful once again. He had clearly grasped from her vague description much more than she had in over two months of sessions, maybe more than she ever would. She didn't ask, though, also because she had the feeling that she would have found no real answers to her questions. "Any time, Dib," she said instead, standing up to see him out of the office. "Can I expect you to come back for another conversation, from time to time?"

Dib stopped on the threshold, seriously considering her proposal this time. She had proven herself to be capable, professional and especially _respectful,_ even when she clearly disagreed with his beliefs and claims. He had no idea of how that mess with Zim would have evolved, but, if the circumstances had allowed it, perhaps he should have given her a chance.

"I'm not sure yet, but… _maybe_ ," he offered, not wanting to make promises he might have not been able to keep, but when he saw her smile brightening he knew that she had read between the lines.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

"Zim! Open the door! I know you're in there!" Dib yelled for the umpteenth time, banging his fist against the front door of his nemesis's base. The other was aware that he was there, there was no doubt since all the gnomes had their empty eyes fixed on him, but, weirdly enough, nothing had been done to force him to leave the perimeter. Maybe it was because he was knocking instead of trying to sneak in, for once, but it was still odd.

"We need to talk, space boy. Come on!" He tried again, starting to feel his body twitching with exasperation and impatience. As much as he didn't want to be shot at, he would have tried to break in, if he hadn't got at least a reaction. "I'm not leaving until you come out and face me!"

He waited a few moments, to see if he would have got an answer, but, when nothing but silence came in reply to his words, he lifted his hand once again to resume the banging. However, this time, before his palm could collide with the door, the latter was suddenly flung up, stopping him mid-gesture.

"Big-Head Boy!" GIR screamed loudly, before he could say a word. The robot grinned cheerfully, as if he had been genuinely happy to see him. "The master not home! He's up in space in his Station! He's not coming down to talk to you, so he told me to tell you to go home! You must stop bothering him for today." His metal arm shot forward and hit the teen in the stomach, preventing him from voicing the protests he had been about to speak. " _But_ he also said that he'll come to you himself, very soon. Perhaps tomorrow. Or the day after." He tilted his head and then shrugged. "I dunno when. He didn't say." He made a shoo gesture with his hand. "So, bye-bye, Mary!"

"GIR, wai…" Dib started to object, still clutching his abdomen in the spot where the SIR Unit had hit him, but the door was slammed closed in his face before he could even try to prevent it from happening. He let out a frustrated sound, but he decided not to try again, even if his fingers were itching to hit the door again. Zim had made himself perfectly clear on the fact that he didn't want him around. Not for the moment at least. And he also had the feeling that more insistence would have been silenced by laser beams.

Throwing his hands in the air, he turned on his heels and started to make his way back home. He should have known that it wouldn't have been easy, especially now that he finally had an idea of what was going on. The fact that he knew that his rival, most likely, wouldn't have destroyed his planet in the next couple of days reassured him to a point, but he still felt uneasy not knowing what the other was exactly up to.

He sighed and sank his hands in his pockets. He would have had to wait a little bit longer apparently, until Zim would have digested his bad mood and come to him. The idea made him frown and he wondered why the Irken would have even thought to do such a thing willingly, knowing that he would have bugged him. There had to be something else going on, somewhere he was unaware of. There always was whenever the Invader was concerned.

Dib shook his head and shrugged. He would have found out soon enough. And he would have made sure that, this time, the alien would have answered to his all questions, no matter what it would have taken. He was prepared to do pretty much everything to get the truth he needed out of his nemesis. He had been for a long time by now.

* * *

Hey there!

It took me longer than I wanted to get this chapter ready, but apparently I'll be busier than I expected. And especially much more tired than I have anticipated. Yay. But never mind. I'm not here to complain! Even if I'll keep the author's notes really short tonight because...I'm *dead*.

To be honest, despite struggling to find the time to finish this chapter, I had fun writing it. Not my favourite one to write, but definitely one of the most interesting to work on. I've been focusing a lot on Zim's character, so it felt nice to dedicate a whole chapter to Dib. And I think that, while there wasn't much true action, it's a very eventful chapter because...yeah, Dib FINALLY finds out what happened to Zim. Wow, chapter 24. I did keep the boy waiting, didn't I? xD  
Aside from that, I loved having the chance to dive in a bit more into Dib's own family situation and social problems. I plan to do more of that later on, but for now I allowed myself to indulge into it. Plus, as I previously said, I love using Acelynn to write down some of my own analyses and headcanons xD Please, forgive my acts of self-indulgence...even if I won't apologise for them! But still, I'm very curious to hear what you think about this chapter! Also, yeah, I'm heading for confrontation time here! ...Maybe xD

Enough of this rambling. Thank you so much to all my readers, I really appreciate your interest! And the support that the people give me by leaving reviews is much more important than I can express with words. Especially in a period like the one I'm going through. Your comments tend to make my day, even when I'm too stressed or upset or tired. So, thank you. I'm glad to know that my work is worth something!

I also wanted to add a special mention for the lovely person who beta-ed this chapter. If it's not filled with ugly typos, I have them to thank! **00InvaderTaz00** from deviantArt. Thank you for this this for me...and like without me having to ask or anything. It's flattering to know that someone cares about my writing up to this point!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

 **CawAreYouDoin** : As I think I said before, the least I can do is answering you! It really means a lot that you take time to read and review my writing. I totally appreciate it. And I know that replying to comments isn't much, but I still try to do it for you guys. It's important! This said, take your time reading and with comments. Even if you don't always leave me a review, I still feel flattered by your interest :D it's pretty touching.  
Yeah, this fandom definitely has space for every kind of trope. It's something I do love myself, and I'm very glad that you're enjoying my take on it :3 And I love writing Gaz xD She's just...such an icon!  
Thanks a lot for the comment! I hope you'll enjoy this new chapter too!  
Ps: That's a huge mood. *nods*


	25. Chapter 25

Three days slowly had passed since Dib's conversation with Ms. Xander. Once again the human hadn't caught any sign of Zim in that lapse of time and it was very likely that his nemesis had stayed locked up in his Space Station for the whole weekend. The Irken hadn't showed up at Skool on Monday morning either, a fact that the teen knew for sure because the counsellor had come looking for him after lunch, asking about the Invader, since the latter had apparently skipped his session with her. By the time the night had fallen once again, the teen had started to wonder if his rival had told him that he would have contacted him just to get him out of his way. It sounded like something Zim could have done, so he wouldn't have been surprised if it had turned out that the message relayed by GIR had been just a trick.

Dib had been pondering to go and knock at the alien's door again when the sound of an incoming email had distracted him from the thought. He had clicked on the letter-shaped notification, revealing a short but commanding note, written in a font that was exaggeratedly large on purpose. " _Meet Zim after your Skool training is over. Don't be late or you will face your doomy end_." An address followed. No explanation had been given on what could be the reason of the meeting and no additional information had been offered on what he should have been expecting from it.

That demanding message was the reason why the human was now standing by the corner of a pretty anonymous building, not too distant from the path he usually walked to go back home from Skool. He hadn't even stopped by his house first, not wanting to keep the moody alien waiting, but when he had reached the meeting point he hadn't found an impatient green menace waiting for him as he had expected. So much for the other's recommendations on not being late. Apparently, while it was mandatory for him, it didn't apply to Zim.

He had to spend two other good minutes looking around before he finally caught a flash of familiar green skin. The Invader was marching in his direction, approaching from the other end of the street, but his eyes were fixed on the small tablet he was holding. His lips were moving, so the teen guessed that he had to be talking to someone, but, even when the alien came close enough for him to hear what he was saying, Dib found that he couldn't grasp a single word of whatever conversation was taking place because the idiom spoken wasn't English. Or any other human language for the matter. It was made of harsh sounds, quick clicks and low hisses. He had heard the Irken speaking his mother tongue before, but in most cases his nemesis had spat out just a couple of words or a curse. Hearing whole sentences made a completely different effect. It was fascinating, on one side, but Dib had also to admit that the idiom sounded as hostile as the Irken race was.

In that moment, Zim's disguised orbs moved up and they locked in his own, catching him staring. The Invader shot him a glare, before lowering his eyes back on the display, one last sequence of sounds leaving his thin lips. The human managed to distinguish a few this time, even if he had little idea of what they might have meant, along with the last one. _Skoodge._ It sounded more like a name, perhaps the one that belonged to whoever his rival had been talking to.

With one last nod, the Irken switched the portable screen off and stealthily slipped it inside his PAK before finally reaching his nemesis. However, instead of stopping next to him, he didn't even slow down his steps and walked past the teen, raising a hand and gesturing him to follow. "Come with your future overlord, Dib-worm," he ordered with his usual dose of arrogance. The almost blind rage he had showed after Purple's call was gone from his expression, but if the human had been able to get a better look at his face he would have noticed that the emptiness was still there, deep and unchanged. "Don't waste Zim's precious time."

Dib rolled his eyes, but did as he was told. It didn't take him much to catch up with the Irken's shorter strides, so he didn't have to rush after him. The Invader had grown quite a bit in the last two months, but he was still at least four inches taller than his rival, if not more.

"Are you at least going to tell me where we're going, space boy?" He inquired, even if he didn't get his hopes up. The fact that the other hadn't tried to tear his head off at first sight didn't mean that the alien was willing to cooperate. Not that it mattered. That time he would have left the Invader alone only once he had got the information he wanted.

"Shut up, human pig," Zim barked in reply, without even turning to look at his companion. He knew very well that the human had accepted to meet him because he wanted answers to his own questions and he had no intention to make it easy for him. After all, he hadn't set up that meeting to satiate his nemesis's curiosity and thirst for information. He was there because his Tallest was still waiting for those data and was getting impatient to get them. He had been able to temporise by sending him the dozens of cinnamon-free donuts he and GIR had baked, but he was aware that no number of snacks would have kept Purple off his back for too long.

He tightened his fists and sped up his pace. He couldn't believe that he was doing it for real. A part of him was still loudly protesting against the useless, painful humiliation he was about to put himself through, but his PAK instincts were clear on the matter. It was as he had told Ms. Xander during their last session. He had orders from his still official leader and he had to carry them out. No matter the cost. Exile or not, he was still Irken and the capability of facing every kind of situation, even the most unpleasant ones, was a skill he had always strived to achieve, together with perfect obedience to his orders. Moreover, it was a matter of principle too, among the other things.

He closed his eyes for a moment, shoving his inner conflict away from his thoughts, in the attempt of smothering it. He had to focus on the fact that the whole situation was buying him precious time. The longer he managed to keep the Tallest busy, the longer he would have had to properly prepare for when they would have officially broken to him the news of his banishment and of whatever other punishment waited ahead of him. If he could keep his attention on the advantages, he would have managed to bear through the whole ordeal more effectively. Besides, the more he suffered, the more Purple would have been delighted and, PAK instincts or not, he refused to play right into the other's claws.

He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he almost missed their destination when they reached it. Catching the sign with the corner of his eye, he abruptly stopped his tracks, causing the human to bump into him. He whipped his head to the side to shoot his rival a new glare, but then he chose not to waste another second and turned on his heels, heading straight for the door they had just passed. He opened it, causing the bell set above it to ring, and slipped inside, not caring to make sure that his rival was following.

Dib didn't, not immediately at least. The exclamation he had been about to spit out when the Irken had come to a stop without warning had died on his lips as he had realised what had caused such sudden change of pace. They seemed to have arrived where his nemesis had wanted to take them, but he hadn't believed it until he had watched Zim walking straight into the building, chasing away his reasonable doubts. It was a _bakery_. And not just _any_ bakery. It was the most renowned of the city, even if not the most expensive, and he knew that it made the best homemade sweets of the area. When he and Gaz were little kids, their father had taken them there a few times, but he hadn't come near the place in years and he surely would have never expected that it would have been his alien nemesis to bring him back there.

Almost afraid that it could have been some kind of lethal trick, he finally snapped out of his trance and approached the door, opening it with caution. Nothing happened, aside from the ringing of the bell. Nothing exploded, no poisoned powder fell on his head, and the shop didn't suddenly turn into a humid, dark, stinky cave. All he got as he stepped in was another glare from the Invader and a friendly smile from the owner, a sturdy middle-aged man, who had been conducting a mostly one-sided chat with the Irken while they waited for him.

"Choose whatever you want, Dib-beast," Zim said laconically, turning back towards the window where the sweets were exposed and pointing the one he had selected. Then he moved away, taking a seat at the closest coffee table.

Dib approached the counter to have a look at the baked goods, but his eyes kept darting towards the Invader, making it hard for him to choose what he really wanted. "Uh, Zim, who's going to pay for this?" He asked, the thought suddenly hitting him. He didn't have much in his wallet and he doubted that his rival was carrying around money that could be used on Earth.

"Oh, it's all on the house," the owner interjected, answering in the alien's place. He chuckled at the astonished look the teen gave him. "You see, I owe your friend over there. He's very good with machines and he saved me," he started to explain in a bright tone. "It was the weekend, half way through the afternoon, so rush hour. We were working on a new batch of sweets when, suddenly, the main power generator broke down. The oven, the blender, the cookers, the lights, everything was fried. I had to go out and explain to the customers that we had to close the shop for technical problems. Then, just as I was about to speak, this kid with a dog comes out of the crowd, asks me for a toolbox and tells me that he would have fixed the mess if I had allowed him to skip the queue and to get whatever he wanted for free. Twenty minutes later, everything was working again. And I don't know what he did to my electrical system, but I'm consuming so little power now that the bills are the lowest I've ever seen in my life. So, it's all on the house for him. Seems fair, doesn't it?"

Zim rolled his eyes when his nemesis moved from gaping at the man to gaping at him. "Don't give Zim that look, Earth monkey. I did it just because GIR was crying because he wanted his snacks," he grumbled, turning his head away. His robot had started to scream so loudly that, sooner or later, even the angry crowd would have noticed that there was a talking dog crying because he wouldn't have got his afternoon treat. Then, while taking care of the repairs, he hadn't been able to notice, once again, how lame and primitive human technology was and he had felt the need to show how his superior Irken knowledge could improve even such a messy, antiquated system. His sidekick had been ecstatic, knowing that he could get everything he wanted for free from then on. "You know how he is. I _had_ to do something."

The human kept looking at him sceptically for a moment, but then shrugged. Blaming GIR for the whole episode seemed plausible. He had seen the Invader doing a lot of things he normally wouldn't have done just for the robot's sake. Besides, now he understood why the alien had picked up that place. Free food.

"Uh, I'll take a slice of apple pie," he said, turning back towards the window and pointing said sweet. "Thanks."

The owner nodded and picked up their orders, starting to prepare the plates, while the teen went to take a seat in front of his rival. A heavy silence fell between them, air filled with tension and an awkwardness that wasn't unlike the one they had often shared during the period when Zim had been affected by the space radiations. Dib wanted to break the quietness and say something, maybe even ask his questions without wasting any more time, but the strained expression on his nemesis's face made him hold his tongue. He had to make the Invader relax at least a bit, if he didn't want the conversation to end up in a verbal and physical fight as per usual.

"You know, if you don't count the few times you ate lunch with me and Gaz at Skool, the last time we sat at the same table without trying to slit each other's throat was when we made Keef explode," he commented after a few more minutes. It was a stupid comment, but it was also effective to break the ice. "It seems like ages ago. And like yesterday at the same time."

The Irken scoffed slightly, moving backwards when the man came to deliver their sweets, and immediately scooped up the whipped cream that had been spread next to his snack, dumping it on the top of the human's pie. "Yes. I'm so glad that I have never been forced to deal with that annoying pig-meat again," he commented, making a disgusted face. " _Creep._ If our plan hadn't worked, I would have kidnapped him and dumped him into a black hole."

"You think he's a creep? That's rich coming from you. Have you seen your own lab?" Dib asked, sarcastically, cutting off a piece of pie and sticking it in his mouth. He couldn't help humming around it. Damn, it was better than he remembered. He hadn't eaten such a good sweet in ages. He had to take Gaz back there. With Zim if possible, so they would have got their treats for free. He distractedly noticed that the alien hadn't touched his food yet, but he didn't stop analysing the fact. He was far too used to seeing the Invader toying with his food and then dumping it. Even if in that case it would have been a real waste. "You're the one who does the creepy experiments."

"I am studying the lifeforms of your pathetic planet, worm child," the Irken shot back, looking offended. He stabbed his own sweet, looking down at it hesitantly, and then finally managed to get his act together, cutting it in half. He lifted one piece and stuffed it in his mouth, chewing it quickly and swallowing before he could chicken out. The fact that it tasted good, much better than the snacks that GIR prepared him for lunch, helped, but the flavour of the cinnamon still made his spooch contract with painful awareness. "And you shouldn't talk either, Dib-human. You've been _stalking_ Zim for four years now. That's creepy too."

"Hey, I'm trying to save the world!" The teen protested, even if he had to admit that his nemesis had a point. All his restless observing and tailing could have been considered _stalking_. And he had acted a bit creepily around the alien in turn, in several occasions. Not that he was going to mention that. Instead, he watched as the Irken devoured with both hurry and reluctance the other half of his food before lifting two claws to silently ask for another portion. "Uh, space boy, are you sure that's wise? You don't get along well with most Earth foods. You'll end up being sick."

The Invader shot him the umpteenth glare. "Zim's spooch can handle this kind of your inferior nourishment," he claimed without hesitation. And it was true, his organs weren't bothered by what he was ingesting. His pride, on the other hand, wasn't so untouched.

The human seemed skeptical for a moment, but then decided not to insist. He had given his nemesis a fair warning. If the other was stupid enough to make himself ill, it would have been his problem and his alone, as long as he didn't puke on him. In any case, his rival now seemed slightly less hostile, so perhaps it was a good moment to start his inquiries.

"Whatever," he mumbled, before swallowing his current mouthful of pie and sucking in a deep breath to gather his courage. "So, will you tell me what's been going on with you in the last two months and a half? You've been…not really yourself since the thing with the radiations." He didn't want to use the information he had gained from Ms. Xander right away. He wanted to give the Irken a chance to tell the truth willingly, even if he doubted that the other would have taken it. His nemesis was too prideful and stubborn. "And don't say that you don't know what I'm talking about, because you know." He allowed himself a small smirk. "You can't deny the obvious, remember?"

"That was Zim's task weeks ago. The period of time in which I had to work on that has been over for a good while," Zim affirmed, but his tone betrayed annoyance, both at the memory of the unfortunate encounter and at the fact that his rival was using the knowledge acquired that day against him. However, despite having stated the truth, on one hand, he knew that his counsellor had meant for that task to be carried out indefinitely, and on the other he was aware that he couldn't have kept denying everything and stalling the conversation anyway, because it wouldn't have got them anywhere. They would have just gone on repeating the same question and answer forever. He didn't have time for that nonsense. He had a task to fulfil.

"What's up with me is none of your business in any case, Dib-worm," he went on, with a hint of hostility, eyes daring the teen to contradict him. He picked up one of the sweets that had been delivered to him, at the same time pleased and horrified to see that the owner had handed him a whole package of them, and quickly ate it before finishing his speech. "So you'd better give up. I won't tell you what is going on in Zim's amazingly brilliant brain."

"Oh, surely no one beats your brain when it comes to shine for dumbness, alien scum," Dib shot back easily, answering with a mean comment on purpose. He kept his eyes locked on his rival and this time he took full notice of the brief but still evident wince he earned in answer, before it was covered by a spark of anger. He hadn't been imagining those reactions then.

He quickly lifted his hands, in a soothing gesture. "That was uncalled for," he added, not wanting to start a fight just because he had needed to confirm his suspicions. "Forget I said it. Sorry." It felt weird apologising to the being who had been tormenting him, torturing him and trying to destroy his planet for four years, but he would have done it again, if it had prevented Zim from lashing out on him. "So you're not telling me."

The Irken looked at him warily, not liking the human's unusual and suddenly accommodating attitude. The worm child was up to something, he was certain of that, but he couldn't figure out what it might be. He bit more viciously into his next sweet, trying to look threatening, but then he chose to brush the insult off. "No. I told you already. Give up, Dib-pig. You won't get anything out of Zim this time."

Dib sighed deeply. That was exactly the kind of behaviour he had thought his questions would have met. The alien was leaving him no other choice. He turned his attention to his pie, taking some time to eat and enjoy most of what was left of it, just in case the Invader had got mad at his words and had done something stupid like knocking the table over. He wasn't really in the mood to make a scene and to endanger people, as it often happened when the two of them fought, but he was sure that Zim wouldn't have reacted kindly at his next words.

The Irken, on his part, kept gulping down his traitorous treats, trying to keep his focus on the human. He had expected his nemesis to get angered at his refusal, but, while he was clearly annoyed, the teen was hardly showing the level of irritation he had anticipated to witness. His rival mostly looked _resigned_ , as if the Invader had just forced his hand and made him do something he would have rather not have to do. He squinted at the other, as to try and read his mind, but, even if he had been capable of such a thing, it would have been hard to achieve it in that moment, with the familiar heat starting to spread under his skin. His antennae were beginning to tingle under his wig and he had to clench his fists for a moment to stop himself from instinctively reaching out for them. He had planned that situation at length before emailing his nemesis, and yet, despite all the efforts he had put into it, somehow he was failing miserably in keeping the upper hand. There was something going on there, something unknown and out of his control, and he had no clue of how to go around it.

Dib ended up finishing his pie before making up his mind about breaking the heavy silence that had fallen between them once again. It wasn't like he had let the time pass in the hope that the alien could change his mind, but he had waited anyway just in case the miracle happened. Besides, that sweet was _really_ good and he would have hated seeing it going to waste. He had sacrificed a lot for the greater good, he deserved to be a little selfish for once, before setting off another bomb. What worried him the most about the Invader's reaction was that he had no idea of what the latter would have done. Until that moment he had been worried that his rival would have destroyed the planet, but, now that he had learnt the same truth Zim had been harshly made aware of, he couldn't predict what might have passed in the Irken's mind. He was a completely wild card, with no rule or greater goal that could have helped the teen imagining how and on what the other would have unloaded his rage.

"Fine, Zim," he slowly began, pushing his empty plate aside, and resting his hands on the table. He kept his tone as calm as possible, even if he knew that it wouldn't have lasted. "This isn't how I wanted the conversation to go, but you're a stubborn mule, so I have no choice."

"Zim has nothing to do with that stinky mammal," the Irken shot back, his expression turning from calculating to offended. Was that the strategy that his rival had chosen? To confuse him with stupid, senseless, human insults? It was such a lame plan. "And I have no idea of what you're rambling about, Earth monkey. Speak your mind or shut your mouth, before I do the second thing for you."

"Ah, curse you, Zim! Why do you always have to make things this hard?" Dib half growled, now really exasperated. That was it. No more beating around bush, no more attempts to play nice. "I spoke with Ms. Xander last Friday, after we bumped into each other in the corridor. You refused to talk to me, so I went to her. I needed to know what the heck was making you act so randomly before you drove me insane. She didn't want to tell me either, because it's against the rules of her job and stuff, but in the end we made a deal. I answered her questions and she gave me the general picture."

The Invader's eyes became wider and wider as the human went on speaking. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. The counsellor couldn't have betrayed _their_ deal, even after the show he had put on the last time they had seen each other. She had said that he could have safely trusted her, that he would have always been in control. That she wouldn't have lied and then stabbed him in the back as the Tallest had done. He refused to accept his nemesis's words as true. He couldn't.

" _LIES_!" He accused, as soon as the human was done speaking. "You're _lying_! This is a filthy trick! She had deal with Zim!" The heat of the anger was mixing with the warmth caused by the spices and he could feel his head spinning a bit. "She gave me her word!"

The teen winced at the alien's tone, quickly understanding why he could hear a hint of desperation in it, among the rage. Maybe that hadn't been such a good idea. He hadn't considered that the Irken might have felt betrayed once again because of the revelations that the woman had made him. Perhaps he should have thought it through more thoroughly. He had never exactly been good with words in the first place, especially when it came to showing tact. However, now it was too late to take back what he had said.

"Zim, she's _worried_ about you. And she can't help you because she has no idea of what you are," he tried to amend. The damage was done, but maybe he could still try to make up for it at least in part. "That's why she agreed to talk to me. She asked me to help her out. To help _you_ out. She hasn't…broken your deal because she feels some sort of…twisted pleasure in stabbing you in the back or in humiliating you. She's not _them_ , Zim. And, while I might be your sworn enemy, I'm not them either. Especially if you aren't trying to destroy the planet anymore."

Zim took his head between his hands, claws digging into the side of his face. The human knew everything, he could tell it from his last sentences. He knew that his Tallest had betrayed and abandoned him, that his mission was a lie and that he wasn't a real Invader. He wasn't sure of what else the woman had said to him, but she had told enough to allow his nemesis to understand the core of the situation. Then why was the human still bugging him? He should have left him alone, gone back to his life since he should have become irrelevant in his eyes, just as he was in the eyes of his own people.

"Why are you still here, if you know that Zim's mission is fake? That I wasn't sent here to destroy your pathetic kind? That it makes no sense for me to do it anymore?" He questioned, lifting his eyes to meet his rival's gaze. His fake violet orbs held a mix of animosity, anger, confusion and apprehension. "I am no real threat to you anymore, worm child. Don't you get that? Or are you here to laugh at the exiled Defective? Is that it?"

Dib blinked, confused by the term the alien had used to define himself, but he decided that it wasn't the right moment to ask for an explanation. "What? No! Why should I laugh at you?" He exclaimed, taken aback by the sudden attack. Did the Irken really think that he would have just turned his back to him and walk away because he had learnt what his nemesis had been trying to hide from everyone for over two months? Apparently Zim did, as ridiculous as it seemed in his eyes. And it also had to be part of the reason why the alien had refused so adamantly to talk to him. His rival was such an idiot at times. After everything that had happened between them, the Invader truly thought that him being a threat to the planet was the only reason why he stuck around. It had been the first and main of his motives, but it was mostly because the Irken hadn't given him much of a choice on the matter.

"Alright, I know why I should. And I'm very tempted to make a joke about how karma is a bitch, but I won't," he continued with a sigh. "To answer your other questions, first of all, you could always like…decide to unload your anger on my planet and destroy it anyway. But that's not why I'm still here. I mean, it's not the only reason." He ran a hand on his face, shifting his glasses. "Zim, we've been fighting for four years. That's a lot of time, for a human. And we've been through a lot, _together_. I'm not suddenly losing interest in you just because they didn't really send you here to destroy Earth. You're still an _alien_ , the first I met, and that alone will pretty much hold my interest in you forever. And then you're…you." He dropped his head. "God, this is so embarrassing."

He licked his lips, trying to find the words that would have allowed him to sum it all up without forcing him to make a fool of himself. When he found them, several moments later, he forced himself to meet those fake orbs, even if he would have felt safer to keep avoiding the other's gaze. However, this was too important. A wrong move and he would have risked causing the situation to degenerate past the point of no return. "You're my _nemesis_ , Zim. With all those weird meanings you give to the term. I'm not sure I understand them all, but…It's true. All of it."

Zim's eyes suddenly became calculating and his gaze intensified, studying the human's face and scanning it for the slightest sign of deception. He found none and his shoulders relaxed, even if almost imperceptibly. His anger deflated slightly too, despite the fact that he was still feeling betrayed by Ms. Xander's decision. She might have acted for what she thought being _his_ best interest, but she had broken the terms of their agreement. However, that was an issue he would have worked out later. Now he had to deal with the human in front of him.

He clenched and unclenched his fists slightly, the awareness of the growing heat in his body strengthening as soon as he focused back on his rival. He couldn't have _that_ conversation while he was in such a vulnerable state. When he had agreed to meet Dib, he had thought that he would have quickly dismissed the other's questions, distracted him with their outing and then taken him back to his base to conduct the experiment more properly. Instead, he had found himself in a very difficult and definitely inconvenient situation. He was drugged and he wouldn't have been rid of the worm child till he had answered all his inquiries. He didn't know how to go around the problem. And the words that the teen had just spoken had done weird things to his antennae. They had to get out of there. He wasn't going to humiliate himself in front of any other human.

"Do you really mean that, Dib?" He asked, seriously, forgoing any kind of insult or name calling. "And do you know what you're saying?"

The teen was a bit surprised by the lack of contempt in the alien's voice, but he nodded with just the briefest hint of hesitation. The latter feeling, though, was quickly deleted by a spark of excitement. Maybe he was finally getting somewhere. "I mean it. And yeah, I think I know what I'm saying."

"Fine, human," the Irken stated and pushed himself on his feet, grabbing the paper bag with what was left of his snacks. He ignored the new rush of warmth that the answer had sent over him and swallowed. Stupid cinnamon. This was all Red's and Purple's fault, even if indirectly. And his own too. And of that cruel fate that attached the faulty PAK to his back, damning him to a life that was just as flawed as the device he had been given. He was tempted to think that, perhaps, it would have been better if he had never managed to persuade Gaz to help him retrieving it when his rival had stolen it, over two years ago. It would have saved him the trouble and the pain to face the ugly truth.

"In this case, Zim wants to have the rest of this conversation somewhere more private," he concluded in an adamant tone, already heading for the door. "And you won't speak a word until we'll get there."

Dib was taken aback again by the Irken's sudden decision, but readily stood up in turn. He offered the owner of the bakery a quick wave before hurrying after his nemesis, who instead hadn't bothered to say goodbye. The impulse to protest against the order he had been given was strong, but he decided not to try his luck. Zim seemed to be willing to tell him the whole story and he didn't want to do anything that could have pushed his rival to change his mind, so he bit his tongue and remained silent as he fell in step with his nemesis.

His amber eyes wandered towards the sky. It was overcast and gray, and the heavy bodies of the clouds left few doubts on what the weather would have soon been like. There was a big storm approaching. For some reason, he couldn't help thinking that it was very appropriated and symbolic for whatever would have become of their lives after that conversation.

* * *

Hello guys!

This chapter took longer than I expected...I guess I hadn't a real idea yet of how busy I would have been. I'm still going to try and keep the more or less two weeks deadline, but I'm not really sure that I'll be able to deliver the chapters on time! I just hope that this one and the future ones will be worth the wait!

It has to be said that I've been trying to work on a one-shot for Halloween too, so, uh, that took writing time too. I should be able to finish and post it on the 31st, so, if you'd like, you can check it out on my profile for that date! (Yes, yes, enough shameless self-promotion ^^")

Now, about the chapter...I haven't given you what you've all been waiting for yet (namely how Zim and Dib will kind of figure out what to do with each other since the truth is out), but I wanted to keep some more suspense. I'm gonna start working on that issue in the next chapter, I promise! So no more waiting or delaying xD I also wanted to write down something a bit...light before diving back into a deeply emotional situation. I hope you enjoyed it and that you'll like I will work things out in the next chapter!

A special thank you goes to once again, to **00InvaderTaz00** who beta'ed this chapter too, and to all my reviewers! Your support is what keeps me writing even when I'm too tired for it!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

 **CawAreYouDoin** : Thanks! I'm so glad to hear that you enjoyed lasy chapter too ^^ So much that you read it twice 0.0 I'm really flattered! And I'm glad to hear that the wait was worth it ^^" I hope it will be this time too! Ahaha yeah, Zim abd Dib have some shared habits apparently xP Thanks a lot for the comment! I loved it *-*


	26. Chapter 26

With a great effort, Dib succeeded in not breathing out a word for the whole walk back to Zim's base. He was overwhelmed by confusion and a question almost escaped his lips when, halfway through it, the Irken suddenly shoved the bag with the few remaining sweets in one of his hand and then grabbed the other with his own, linking their fingers together. For a moment, he worried that the Invader might have been back under the influence of the weird radiations, but the mortified and irritated expression on the alien's face told him that there had to be something else going on.

The human bit his tongue once again and swallowed the words that had come to his lips, trying to focus on something else. His eyes fell on their linked hands. Zim had three fingers where his mind would have instinctively expected five. It felt a bit weird, but the teen quickly found that, if he wrapped his ring finger and pinkie around the border of the Irken's palm and the edge of his thin wrist, the hold became strangely fitting and stopped feeling so odd. His awkward conversation with Ms. Xander came back to his mind as he suddenly realised how elegant those alien claws looked, when studied closely and attentively, and he hurried to divert his thoughts once again, preferring to watch as the Invader as he used his own free hand to eat the sweets out of the paper bag. It was a much safer choice. Besides, Zim seemed to be hellbent on finishing his snacks before they reached the base and he couldn't help wondering if his nemesis was just trying to keep himself busy, as Dib himself was, or if there was another reason he couldn't grasp yet behind his actions.

The Irken, for his part, completely avoided looking at the human, even when he took possession of his hand. Feeling Dib's body heat next to him had been driving him crazy, leaving him torn between the impulse to touch his antennae and the one to touch his rival. In the end, he had decided that the second option was less dangerous considering the setting. He had felt his rival's inquiring gaze on him at the gesture, but once again he had refused to meet his eyes. Luckily for him, the worm child had oddly kept quiet, because he wasn't sure that he could have trusted his words in that moment. He didn't want to accidentally slip out how _nice_ the human's fingers felt wrapped around his own and how their touch soothed the heated tingling of his skin. No extra humiliation would have been added to the one he would soon have had to put up with, if he could have helped it.

So, he had busied himself with the remaining snacks, even if he knew that ingesting more of the cursed spices would have just made things worse. It was still better than focusing on the creature standing next to him. Or on what he would have to do once they had reached their destination. Or on the conversation waiting ahead of him. Or on the fact that his skin was almost on fire in that moment. He couldn't tell what was worse.

When the building finally came into view and they quickly reached the small gate that led inside the garden, the human and the alien were struck by very different emotions. Dib felt mostly relieved because it meant the end of his forced silence, but he was also concerned about how the talk could have gone and what consequences it could have brought for both the world and his relationship with the Invader. Zim, instead, experienced a spark of dread running along his spine. The hated moment had come and he was anything but ready to face it. However, he forced himself to shove his agitated feelings away, as he had been taught to do during his training, and let go of the teen's hand to open the door and usher them both inside. His people might have rejected him, but he was still Irken. A, _mostly_ , fearless soldier, a merciless conqueror who didn't know hesitation, a superior being. And he would have acted as one.

"GIR, get me a soda," he ordered to the robot that had come to greet them with an enthusiastic squeal. He watched as his sidekick shot on attention before rushing away giggling and then pointed the couch to the human. "Sit, Dib-thing," he commanded, tearing the now empty paper bag out of his nemesis's hand and throwing it in the vague direction of the kitchen, before hurrying to remove his disguise. His antennae jumped a little as soon as the wig was gone, happy to be free and demanding attention that he once again denied to them.

Dib did as he was told, eyeing the Invader with a hint of uncertainty as the latter took a seat in front of him, crossing his legs under him. He shifted in his spot, leaning against the armrest, so that he was fully facing his rival and waited, not daring to break the silence. Technically he could have, since they were inside the alien's base, but he preferred waiting for the other's permission. It was a delicate moment and it was already bad that he was feeling so unsure. The last thing he needed was to mess up with his words.

Zim remained quiet till GIR came back with his drink and then greedily took a long sip from it. He was starting to sweat for how hot he was feeling. The soda wasn't very cold, but it still gave him the illusion to help a bit. "Ask your questions, human," he ordered again, guessing why his nemesis still hadn't spoken. If he hadn't been struggling with the effects of the cinnamon and with the awful prospect of the conversation that was to come, he would have enjoyed seeing his enemy so much on the edge.

Dib let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He had figured that the Irken wouldn't just have opened his mouth and told him everything. He had been expecting to have to work for it, and he knew exactly what to ask and where to start from.

"Ms. Xander told me that you…uh, "accidentally" found out that your Tallest meant to exile you here and not to send you on a mission," he began in the most serious tone he could convey. "How did that happen exactly?"

The Invader's expression darkened. Apparently the worm child wanted to hear the tale from the very beginning, just as the counsellor had. At least this time he would have been able to speak the facts without having to change them or go around the things he couldn't explain or reveal. It was a very small consolation, but in that moment whatever could have made the talk a bit easier on him was welcome.

"That's incorrect, Dib-thing. Zim's Tallest didn't send me to Earth to _exile_ me. They had no idea that this ball of filth existed before I landed on it. They sent me out with the excuse of a "secret mission" because they hoped that I would have never found a planet, got lost and died in space. This is what they did," he stated dryly. Better correcting the mistakes immediately, so that he wouldn't have been forced to go back on them later. "However, against all expectations, I found your pathetic world and assumed that it was the one they had told me about. Useless to say that they were shocked to hear the news, even if at the time I was still too blinded by excitement and pride to notice. So, they played along with their lie, for their own personal amusement."

The teen blinked, not really knowing what to say. It was even worse than he had expected. The Tallest didn't just want his rival gone. They wanted him to die a horrible death and, since he had had the luck, if it could be called such, to find a planet, they had left him there, with his faulty tech, hoping that he would have blown himself up or died because of something he would have encountered on that foreign world. It was incredibly _cruel_ , even if he couldn't have said that he was surprised. Irkens were a ruthless race, that had been obvious since the very start. What still confused him was the reason why they seemed to hate Zim so much. That question kept bugging him, but he knew that pressing it forward now could have turned out to be a mistake, so silence felt like a better choice. Luckily, the alien seemed not to be expecting a reaction or a comment from him, because he went on without needing an explicit invitation to continue.

"Back to your stupid inquiry. After I dealt with my…radiations problem, I called my Tallest to inform them that the inconvenience had been solved," the Invader resumed, but he avoided mentioning how he had previously made a fool of himself in front of his leaders. That detail was irrelevant to the story and he didn't wish to make his position worse than it already was. "The transmission must have been put through by mistake or without informing them, because when I was connected they were talking to each other and were unaware of my presence. They seemed to be discussing something important about someone. I thought that it could be about me."

"So you _eavesdropped_ their conversation?" Dib couldn't help interjecting, raising an eyebrow. For what the other had known, his leaders could have been talking about anyone, but of course Zim, with his huge ego, had instantly thought that it _had_ to be him. He had been right, for once, even if it was hard to say if it was a bad or a good thing.

"Don't interrupt Zim, foolish creature!" The Irken hissed, in a high-pitched, annoyed voice. Then he crossed his arms and looked away. He still felt a bit ashamed of his choice, but it had turned out to be very important and, perhaps, the right decision to make. At least, under some points of view. "Yes, Zim did…listen. They were talking about me, but not in the way I had expected." His tone became bitter as he spoke that last sentence. He had thought that he would have heard praises where there had always been nothing but insults.

"They were picturing the moment when they would have told me the truth about how I should have never found Earth, about how my mission is a lie, about how everyone hates me, about how I'm not an Invader anymore. About my… Defective status." His antennae lowered and the tingling disappeared, together with great part of the heat, both replaced by that now familiar cold emptiness in his chest. "They were foretasting the moment when they would have shoved the truth in my face and then left me here to rot. Alone, without a chance to see Irk ever again, without a mission to give a sense to my existence. At first, I thought that it was just an elaborate joke, but in the end I couldn't…keep denying the obvious. They were being sincerer than they have ever been with me." He clenched his fists. "That's how I found out. Satisfied?"

Once again, the human found himself without an answer. He was satisfied, because the alien had replied thoroughly to his question, but he wasn't in the way his rival's tone seemed to be implying. While he couldn't deny that he felt a spark of childish and vindictive pleasure in hearing the Irken telling the story of what, under many points of view, was his ultimate demise, those words brought him a small pang of sadness too. He could imagine how it had to feel, because of the simulations the alien himself had put him through, and it wasn't a pretty set of emotions. Besides, Zim was wearing once again that creepy, empty look he couldn't stand. The bitter dejection highlighted the void in his eyes even more. Even if he had found the whole thing absolutely delightful, which he didn't, he wouldn't have been able to enjoy it fully.

He bit the inner side of his cheek, his mind racing but unable to settle on a proper course of action. He honestly didn't know what to do. If it had been anyone else, even Gaz, he might have tried to comfort them, but with the Invader it would have felt too weird and he didn't have the courage to do it anyway. He couldn't have Zim lashing out on him, not when his rival was in that dangerous cold mood. He would have paid a price maybe a bit too high to bear.

"That word you used. It's the second time you mention it," he chose to say instead, ignoring the provocation with which his nemesis had ended his tale. Asking questions was much easier. "Defective." He could have taken a few guesses, considering the translation, but he had the feeling that the explanation wasn't as simple as one might have thought. "What's that supposed to mean?"

If possible, Zim's eyes darkened even more at the inquiry. That wasn't something he was eager to clarify, but he knew that he would have to, because otherwise none of what he had said would have really made sense to the teen.

"As you know, Irkens aren't _born_ as you inferior creatures are. We are genetically engineered and to each smeet is attached a PAK, as soon as they are hatched. PAKs are what make an Irken who and what they are. Our personality is encoded in it and so is all the knowledge that our race has accumulated during the centuries and that is necessary for us to be a useful part of the Empire. As an Irken grows and trains, new pieces of information are added and there can be some changes in their character, but for the most we stay the same," he started to explain, avoiding the human's gaze. He didn't want the other to see how uncomfortable the subject made him. He didn't want to show the deep shame he felt at the thought of the device linked to his spine and carrying the core of everything he was. However, shame wasn't the only emotion he was experiencing. The anger wasn't far behind, boiling as hot as the humiliation was. While he hated his status just as much as the rest of his people, he also felt resentful for the treatment he had received.

"However, at times it happens that some PAKs are…faulty, that their code and ID are corrupted or that there is some technical flaw in the device," he went on, his voice becoming drier and drier. "As a consequence, the Irken who receives it becomes Defective in turn. As broken and corrupted as their PAK is. Irken Defectives are considered unpredictable and dangerous. Most of them are crazy. They cannot be controlled or reformed by the Control Brains. For this reason, they are usually either terminated or assigned to menial labourers." He made a face, but his expression soon turned blank once again. "They are a menace, a wild card that the Empire can't afford."

Dib attentively listened to the explanation. The information he had been given was vague, especially the technical parts, but he understood that they weren't important in that moment. The alien had made the essential point of his speech perfectly clear, and that also answered his question about the reason why the Tallest had wanted him dead or at least very far away. They had jumped on the chance they had been offered to be rid of him when the Irken had, somehow, convinced himself that he was still an Invader and had demanded a mission. What Zim had got instead had been a death sentence masked as the promise of a second chance.

The alien misinterpreted Dib's prolonged silence and his gaze darkened even more. "You must be thinking what a fool Zim has been for not having realised the truth much sooner," he accused, his tone low and antennae pressed flat against his skull. His stance was screaming hostility. "You must be thinking what a fool I am for having believed that I could have still been appreciated after I was banished the first time. And after how my Existence Evaluation went." He couldn't really blame the human for having such thoughts, since they were the hideous _reality_ , even if he was still reluctant to admit it. And he didn't want to confess that, most likely, his inability to see the truth about his actions was part of his faulty system too. "Go on. Laugh at Zim. Join everyone else in my humiliation."

The teen bit back a sigh. Leave it to his nemesis to think that he was mocking him even when he wasn't. "Listen, space boy. It's true that you aren't always brilliant. At times you're more than a bit…dense," he started to say, the hint of grin struggling to blossom on his lips, against his will. It was really an understatement, but insults were the last thing Zim needed to hear in that moment. He had to keep his tongue in check, if he wanted to get to the bottom of that conversation. "But you were as much of a fool as I am every time I try to make people believe me, when I try to persuade them that the paranormal is real. I keep hoping that sooner or later humans will open their eyes and _see_ , but…I guess that by now I should know that I'm just deluding myself. And so were you when you tried to get back your…Invader status."

Their situations were very different, but the rejection and the scorn they had gained were the same. He understood Zim's bitterness far better than he was ready to admit. He had felt so many times, during the years, whenever he had been called crazy or a failure. Especially when those words had been coming from his father. And how could have he not understood it? He had always tried so hard, given so much, for so long, and all he had got as a reward had been insults, disrespect and dismissal. It had hurt, every single time, and as the time had passed, he had found himself wondering if it was worth it more and more often. However, of course, he had never allowed those thoughts to linger for too long in his mind. He couldn't have afforded it. Not when his planet depended on him. No doubt was allowed.

"Uh, so they tried to exile you once already?" He asked again, shoving those reflections away. That wasn't the right time to get lost in his head. He had to focus on the alien in front of him. "And they…examined you? Like some sort of trial? Why?"

The Invader looked away, mumbling something in Irken in answer to the implied taunts. He wasn't really in the mood to talk about that part of his past. "My Tallest, and apparently most Irkens, have known since the start that I was a Defective and they have tried to get rid of me a few times already. Of course, I misinterpreted their intentions each time and I started to see past their schemes only once I realised that what they were truly planning for me," he reluctantly answered, still keeping his eyes anywhere but on his nemesis. His actions made him feel shame, despite the fact that the disasters he had caused still gave him a sense of distorted pride, since they were so great that no one had ever achieved anything worse than he had. And most likely no one ever would. "I was reassigned as a Food Service Drone after I caused…an _accident_ during Operation Impending Doom I."

"That would be the first wave of invasion carried out by the current Tallest," the Computer interjected helpfully, just as Dib had been about to step in and ask for clarifications. However, it hadn't spoken just to make the conversation easier. Not for the Invader at least. The two of them might be collaborating better now, but that didn't mean that it had lost its liking for making everything hard for the alien. "And with "accident" my master means that he ruined it completely by wreaking havoc and bringing destruction on his own home planet."

Zim had felt a hint of irritation when the machine had stepped in, effectively stealing his role as the narrator, but by the time it was done talking he was positively furious once again. How had that foolish mass of circuits dared ridiculing him so openly in front of his sworn enemy?!

"Computer! This is _Zim's_ story and _I_ will tell it!" He exclaimed, jumping on his feet and raising his fist towards the general direction of the ceiling, since the voice had come from there this time. If the stupid thing had added a single word to the mess it had already made, he would have carried out his threats. No matter if he needed it to keep his base functioning. "Your contribution is _not_ welcome. So, if you don't want to have the wrath of Zim unleashed on your Brain core, you have better stay out of this!"

"Oh, I apologise, master. I thought that you were trying to _minimise_ the facts. How foolish of me to think such a thing," the Computer chirped back, its voice thick with sarcasm. "So, you were going to tell about all the other "accidents"? How you created the giant blob monster that ate firstly Tallest Miyuki and then Tallest Spork? Or the fact that you caused Horrible Painful Overload Day? Part I and II? Which, by the way, meant a total of nine years of blackout for Irk. Oh, and that your PAK is so faulty that it made the Control Brains that were evaluating you go _crazy_?" It made a pause to let the words sink in better. "If that was your intention, then I'm _truly_ sorry for the intrusion."

The small electronic chuckle that followed caused the Irken to _shake_ in anger. His skin was hot once again, but this time the sensation was born completely out of fury, the effects of the drug temporarily overcome by the intensity of his boiling rage. He had thought of revising _a little_ of the version of the story he would have told Dib. Just a bit. Like, enough not to make him sound like the worst Defective ever in the history of the universe. How was he supposed to operate damage control now that the irritating machine had spilled out all the dark secrets of his past? How _humiliating_. He was starting to feel as he had during his Existence Evaluation, once he had caught up on everyone's contempt for him. In that moment, though, it was even worse because he had nothing that could have helped him in denying the truth.

"I was less than five minutes old when I caused the first blackout!" He ended up yelling, fists clenched by his sides in the vain attempt of keeping his rage from exploding as it had done after he had eavesdropped the Tallest's conversation. This time, though, he would have made sure to unload it on the Computer's core if they had come to that.

"Master, you realise that such a statement doesn't exactly come out in your favour, don't you?" The machine pointed out, with a fake polite tone.

" _SILENCE_!" Zim screeched, his voice so loud and high-pitched that it made the glass of the window tremble. "It's a record no one has even been able to best!"

"Oh, I'm sure the universe is very, very _sad_ about that fact," was the sarcastic reply.

The fight went on, but at that point Dib had stopped listening. He was too occupied with trying to wrap his head around what he had just learnt. He was starting to understand even better why his rival's leaders had been so eager to get rid of said Irken, to the point that they had tried everything in their power to achieve their goal. He still thought that their deceits had been cruel, but he no longer blamed them as much as he had done before hearing the whole story. He himself had always known that Zim was a _menace_ , but before that moment he had never imagined how truly dangerous and crazy the other could be. He had brought death and destruction on his own people and world, more than once, and he had been able to dismiss the fact and even to find a way to be _proud_ of it. If it had been anyone else, he wouldn't have been able to believe it, but this was _Zim_.

His amber eyes locked on the shorter figure of his nemesis, who was still busy screaming, half in Irken, half in English, at the Computer, who, in return, seemed to have chosen to simply ignore his master. It was hard to believe that such a destructive power, so great that it had endangered a whole race, could be contained in such a thin body. It seemed impossible, especially remembering how small Zim had been when he had firstly arrived on Earth. And yet, despite all the troubles he had caused, the Irken had managed to make it to the rank of Invader anyway, against all the odds and most likely against the will of whoever he had crossed paths with. Instructors, other aspiring conquerors, his Tallest. He had stood up against a whole world that wanted him gone or dead and had dug his way out of every bad situation, with a mixture of stubborn determination, unashamed luck, a unique kind of madness and single-minded efforts. The human wasn't sure if he found it amazing or terrifying. He had only one, big doubt left now.

"So, you caused two huge blackouts on a whole planet, destroyed a big part of said planet, sabotaging an invasion, killed two of your past leaders and made a super artificial intelligence go crazy," he listed, stepping into the still ongoing, one-sided angry yelling session, not caring that he had cut the Irken off mid-sentence. He frowned deeply. "How is it that you still haven't made the Earth implode? I mean, from what I've just heard, destroying everything you touch comes… _natural_ to you."

Zim turned to shoot him a heated glare, clearly disliking having been interrupted while he was describing in the tiniest details how he would have made his Computer experience the worst pain possible. However, when he was addressed the question and the comment that followed, most of his anger suddenly deflated, replaced by a dejected, empty look. He let himself fall back on the couch and remained quiet for a long moment, his shoulders still rigid, but with a feeling that was very different and much colder from the flaring, humiliated rage that had been holding him up. The shame was still there, but it was deeper and more cutting now.

"Haven't you heard what I told you earlier, human? I am a Defective and apparently I am no good for the Empire," he stated flatly, looking away. "Destroying this filthy ball of dirt would be proving that I am at least worthy as a weapon of mass destruction. Which I am not, unless the wrong planets are involved." His face contracted in a reluctant expression. "Besides, there has always been _someone_ messing with my amazing plans."

Dib was taken aback by the hint of self-loathing he caught in the alien's voice. He had never heard the other speaking of himself in a way that wasn't at least flattering. Now, instead, his nemesis's tone was openly deprecating. His mind went back to what Ms. Xander had said about overconfidence and the need to hide a lack of real self-esteem, wondering if, in truth, the woman had been right, at least in part. After all, even the usual adjective his rival had used to describe his plans had sounded empty and spoken just out of habit, with no real meaning to it.

He hesitated for a moment, once again at loss of what he should have said or done. Every word he had spoken till that moment had done nothing but either fuel the Irken's anger or enhance the emptiness in his eyes. Not the results he had been looking for. He clenched his fists and then decided to throw any caution away, stretching a hand out towards Zim. The Invader never responded well to physical contact, but he was human and the idiot was on Earth, so the alien would have shut up and let him try to cheer him up the human way.

"Listen to me carefully, alien scum, because I won't repeat what I'm about to say _ever_ again," he claimed, his fingers wrapping around the Irken's bony shoulder. His tone was commanding and firm, but devoid of the harshness and of the hint of contempt that he used to address the other during most of their interactions. "I can't deny that you're a damned menace. And a moron, most of the times. But you passed all the…examinations to become an Invader, didn't you? And you managed to kick my ass plenty of times in the past. And in these last two months…You proved me that you could have conquered this planet a hundred times, if you had carried out your plans to the end, instead of choosing to drop them at the last moment. So, no matter what your race or your leaders think. You might be a Defective, a wild card, whatever. You might have caused them more harm than anything else, but you're good enough to carry out this mission, if you want to. If you tried hard enough and were more careful and less crazy, perhaps you can do it, _now_ , exactly because you know the truth, so…maybe your Tallest have done you a favour by banishing you here, all considered. This mess apparently unlocked your…hidden potential." He made a face, but he didn't really feel the displeasure his expression showed. "Unfortunately for me and my planet."

He made a brief pause. The situation was not just awkward, but completely _absurd_. Not even in his wildest dreams he had ever imagined of speaking those words, to the alien threat he had sworn to fight and destroy, of all people. And yet that was what his real life had become. Him, with his horrible social skills, trying to comfort a being from outer space, who perhaps was no longer the threat he had thought him to be. And yet, at the same time, it made sense, in a weird, incongruous way. No one could have ever understood his nemesis as he did and, if the Irken had chosen too, he would have probably understood him better than Dib himself could do. There were so many parallels between them, so many shared emotions, even if they came from completely different worlds and had always stood on two opposite sides.

His expression turned slightly more determined. Zim had tensed under his fingers when he had grabbed him, but he hadn't done anything to move away and now he was looking at him, magenta eyes wide and expression unreadable. The teen decided to take it as a good sign, since he hadn't been attacked yet.

"You've let them treat you like trash, for I don't know how many years. You've swallowed every insult and gone through every humiliation. You've allowed them to walk over you for all this time and now you're letting them use every little thing you've done to wound you, even after they've turned their backs on you," he resumed with a bit more confidence, even if the weirdness of the situation hadn't diminished. "For how I see it, now you have two choices. Either you let them wreck you completely, as you've allowed them to do in these two months, or you can show them, _and_ yourself, what you're truly capable of. If you asked me, the crazy, cocky moron I've been fighting for four years, the alien scum who's come to see me as his nemesis, the stupid idiot I hate but who is also the closest thing to a friend I've ever had in my life, well…He'd go for the second thing and show everyone that he's not a black hole, but more like a…black star."

He almost cringed at his last sentence. If Gaz had been there, she would have mocked him till the day of his death. As the kiss, that talk was something he would have never told his sister about, he decided. His words were turning sentimental and stupid and he had no idea of where the latter ones had come from. He just hoped that Zim would have forgotten his little, pitiful, poetic slip quickly. He cleared his throat. He had better finish his speech before things got too out of control.

"That said, I'd be grateful if you _didn't_ destroy my planet to prove a point." His fingers tightened around the Invader's shoulder. "And I promise that I meant it when I said that I won't stop bothering you, even if your mission is a lie and you aren't a real Invader. Not officially, at least. If you still try to wreck the Earth, I'll stop you. Till the day I'll drop dead. If you decide to do something else…We'll find a way to work that out too." He surprised himself with how much he meant his words. His mind went back to the brief fantasy he had had while his rival was under the effect of the radiations, of him and the Irken getting along. Perhaps he didn't need to go into a parallel universe to have that happening. The shadow of a grin curved his lips. "By now you should know that it's not that easy to get rid of me, space boy. I've sworn to be a forever-lasting pain in your green neck and I intend to be true to my word."

Zim kept staring hard at the human even after the latter had stopped talking. That was perhaps the longest speech he had heard Dib making and the foolish worm child tended to talk _a lot_ at times. Not to mention that it was completely different by the words the human usually addressed him. It reminded him of the explanations and the encouragements that Ms. Xander offered him during their sessions. The difference was that, in this case, there was a deeper level of understanding and he was aware that the teen not only knew the situation, but also understood it. Understood _him_. The awareness made him feel strange, and the hand on his shoulder, the one that had made him want to shove his rival away at first, had brought back the heat and the tingling on his skin. He had almost forgotten about the drug that was supposed to be in his system before Dib's fingers had reminded him of it and now the sensations had exploded back, stronger than before and threatening to steal away every inch of control he had over himself.

He swallowed slightly, clenching his fists in the vain attempt to fight the urges. He wanted to look away, but he couldn't. His gaze was stuck on the human as it had been that one time in his Voot Cruiser, while they were orbiting around Venus. A thought hit him at the realisation. The warmth and the tingling in his antennae, he had felt them too, back then, when he had been overwhelmed by the sudden impulse to "conquer" his nemesis. Less intense, less demanding, but it had been the same sensation the drug made him experience. The same he was feeling now, stronger than ever. Despite what Dib had said about him having discovered his potential, apparently his plans still backfired on him.

"Zim doesn't know yet what I will do about your filthy planet," he forced himself to say, realising that he had been quiet for too long. He wasn't even sure of how to answer to the words he had been addressed. He wasn't used to have someone taking his side, standing up for him, and the teen had just chosen to tell him that he was _right_ , in his own way, and that a whole Empire was wrong. And he had after everything the Invader had done to him, after everything that had passed between them. Or, perhaps, _because of_ everything that had passed between them. "For now, I'm trying to clean your filthy atmosphere and get rid of those poisonous rains. If I'm stuck here, I have no intention of suffering through your planet's ugly weather every time the filthy water decides to fall down from your dirty sky."

He lifted a hand, almost against his will, and he hesitated, not knowing what exactly he wanted to do with it. He was tempted to reach out for his antennae, but he forced himself not to and his fingers ended up clasping the ones that the teen still had on his shoulder. He tore them away from their spot, but then kept holding them, so tightly that it had to hurt, if the wince that escaped the human's lips meant something.

"I might decide to conquer and rule myself your stupid ball of dirt, instead of destroying it," he went on, the idea suddenly emerging with incredible clarity compared to the unfocused chaos that was raging in his mind. "Not for the Empire, but for Zim. Make it the advanced and powerful centre of _my_ own empire. Use that potential you mentioned for something other than destruction. I could show Red and Purple what their hated Defective can do. That I can do better than them even if I'm faulty and _shorter_."

The thought was intriguing, _intoxicating_ , just as the chemicals running in his system. It stuck in his head, even if he was no longer thinking straight. Then he was moving again, kneeling on the cushions. One of his legs had ended up between his rival's slightly parted tights and the claws of his free hand had wrapped around the front of the human's shirt. He blinked. When had they got so close? He couldn't tell and he didn't care. He wasn't done talking, he was missing his final piece. "I will become your overlord anyway. But, tell me, Dib. Will you still fight me in that case or will you pick the right side and help Zim _ruling_?"

Dib had been relieved to see that his words hadn't caused a violent reaction from the Irken, who instead had looked almost contemplative. He could have sworn that the other had _listened_ to him, carefully, had understood for once and was now seriously considering what he had said. However, the stall hadn't lasted long and the situation had quickly escalated, taking a turn that he hadn't expected. At first the alien's speech about him being busy cleaning the atmosphere had confused the teen, until he had realised that his nemesis had just answered to his questions about what the heck the Invader had been doing in the last three weeks. He hadn't been working on some evil plan, but on a project that could have benefitted him and, as a consequence, humankind. It was amazing and ridiculous at the same time, but at this point he was experiencing too many emotions all together to be able to understand what he truly felt about the discovery.

Once again, though, he wasn't given the time to wrap his mind around the idea, because suddenly Zim was clasping his hand painfully and talking about conquering the Earth and making it the centre of his own mighty nation. He was making a speech about showing his leaders what he was capable of and of taking his revenge, in a way. The Irken's eyes were unfocused and the human had noticed, distractedly, that his body felt warmer than it should have and also that his PAK, which was usually silent, was producing a buzzing noise. His attention, however, had been quickly snapped away when the Invader had grabbed his shirt, moving as to straddle him, and had more or less demanded that he sided with him and helped him building his empire.

"Zim, what are you doing?" He weakly asked, pressing his back against the seat in the vain attempt of putting more distance between them. The Irken was too close for comfort, and that situation was reminding him more and more of what had happened the last time he had had a lap full of Invader, the thought making his face heating up slightly. He should have done something. He should have pushed his rival away, off him, and fled as fast as his legs allowed him. Thinking of getting along with the alien was one thing, but _this_ , whatever it was that was happening, was a completely different story. One he wasn't sure he could have handled.

He lifted his free hand, since the other still was being held hostage by the Irken's claws, and landed it on his nemesis's shoulder again, not pulling forward, but not even pushing away. He couldn't. Not with those magenta orbs pinning him in place.

" _Cinnamon_ ," Zim growled under his breath, too busy with his inner fight to realise how freaked out by his behaviour the human was. The tingling had become unbearable. His claws let go of the teen's shirt and went to close around one of his antennae, giving it a firm stroke. He clenched his teeth, not wanting to repeat the noise incident of the previous time, but he still hissed out loudly as his head fell forward, landing against his rival's chest.

Dib frowned in confusion at the answer he had got, since it made no sense to him, but, before he could ask, the Irken's forehead had collided with his body and he found himself fascinated by the way in which those gloved fingers were stroking the thick, black stalk. He had the feeling that he shouldn't have been staring, that it should have been a show for no one's eyes, but he couldn't help himself. However, the sounds the alien was making were worrisome and so was the unusual heat of his body. He shook his head, trying to get a hold of himself, and he tightened his grip on the other's shoulder, a hint of worry blossoming between the confusion and the awkwardness.

"Zim, are you sick?" He dared to ask, noticing that his throat was drier than it should have been. "Is something wrong with your PAK?" He hadn't thought of it before, but what if having a faulty PAK also meant having actual _technical_ issues? "It's making…noises."

The Invader let out another growl. "Zim is… _drugged_ , not ill, you foolish…creature!" He exclaimed, rage mixing with a whole different kind of feeling in his tone. Talking wasn't the easiest task in his state and he couldn't help hating how the teen was unable to grasp what was going on. It was a bit pretentious because he himself didn't really know in the first place, but those were details. "It's an…experiment. Purple asked me to…to find out…how this _thing_ works while interacting with other beings."

Dib blinked, having some troubles grasping everything the Irken was saying, also because half of the alien's words turned into low hisses while he was still spelling them, but after a few moments he managed to reconstruct what was being said. "That's why you accepted to meet me? To use me as a test subject for some weird experiment your Tallest asked you to do?!" He exclaimed, incredulous, before realising that it made perfect sense. He should have known that his rival had his own agenda. Zim would have never agreed to talk to him, if he hadn't been planning something. He couldn't even feel offended, that considered. "What did they give you? What did you take?"

"He wanted to… _humiliate_ Zim. Force me to make a fool out of myself," the Invader spat out, this time in anger. His body tensed for a moment, but it went almost limp once again at the next stroke he administered to his antenna. His mind was fixing more and more on the feeling of the human's hand in his and he feared where his dazed thoughts would have soon landed. "And he clearly has succeeded."

The bitterness reached his voice despite the sparks of pleasure rushing along his spine. He would have never forgiven that outrage, no matter how much time would have passed. Even if he had lived till the end of that universe, he would still be holding that grudge. Not even taking a proper revenge against his soon former leaders would have been completely fulfilling.

He closed his eyes tightly, glad that he was already leaning against the teen. He wouldn't have been able to sit straight without a support. However, he was still in no shape to give his nemesis a coherent answer. "Stupid spices. It's an…an…afr…aphro…" How was that hideous word again? He hadn't been able to recall it while sober, let alone now. Then he had a better idea. "Computer! Explain!" He barked, instead of finishing the sentence.

"Yes, master!" The machine answered, sounding too eager and too pleased with its task. Seeing the Irken in that state still weirded it out, but it wouldn't have wasted a chance to embarrass his master, especially after all the insults it had been addressed. "Thanks to yet another one of GIR's culinary experiments, my master has accidentally discovered that the Earthen spice called "cinnamon" works as a mild _aphrodisiac_ for his race," it began to say, but it instantly paused, rethinking its words. "Or rather, he found out that it made him feel very weird and I had to explain him what an aphrodisiac is. The effects are the ones you're witnessing now. After they wore off, the master and I decided to use this unfortunate discovery to get a small payback on the Tallest, by sending them drugged snacks. While the plan worked, even if not as well as it was hoped for, it seems to have backfired on my master, since Tallest Purple had ordered him to conduct this…new experiment. I believe for his personal curiosity, but mainly for the reason my master mentioned. His utter humiliation."

"Too many…details," Zim growled again, but in his current state, shivering and flushed in both pleasure and shame, he hardly looked threatening. He managed to glance up at the human, failing at looking truly upset. "You got your answers. Again. Be satisfied."

Dib, however, wasn't listening. His mind had stopped more or less at the word "aphrodisiac", even if he had followed the rest of the explanation. His eyes had moved to the ceiling and his face had got warmer once again, as his brain connected the dots and realised why his nemesis was _literally_ so hot and bothered. He couldn't bring himself to look down. Or rather, he knew that he shouldn't have or something bad and awkward and weird would have happened. _Again._

"How much does this…uh, how long does this last?" He questioned, addressing the Computer mainly. The Invader didn't look like he was in the right state of mind to answer him. "And what am I supposed to do in the meanwhile?"

The Irken, however, cut in before the machine could reply. "Make yourself useful, worm child," he hissed, managing to sound commanding despite the purple tint of his skin and the shortness of his breath. He yanked the teen's hand that he was still holding, bringing it up to his head. He refused to believe that it was allowing such a thing, but he was overwhelmed and he knew that, if he hadn't done something, the drug would have kept stressing his body until it would have fried his whole system. Or, at least, that was what he feared in that moment. " _Stroke_. Zim demands it! And be careful or I'll lead you to your _doom_ …As soon as I'll be rid of the effects of this hideous substance."

At that point Dib was forced to look down, even if against his will, his eyes following how his fingers were led to the other antenna. He stiffened, a mixture of feelings exploding in his chest. There was a hint of lingering disgust in the middle, but that was hardly the only emotion he was experiencing. Curiosity, eagerness, nervousness, uneasiness and what disturbingly felt like a timid desire. His amber orbs moved to the alien's face and he instantly regretted his choice, because in the moment when he met the other's magenta gaze he knew that he was _screwed_. The Invader's face was more flushed than his own and his thin lips were curled in a mixture of pleasure and irritation. It was enticing, just as the heat in his eyes, which burnt much more than the one of his skin. And once again those large orbs were fixed on _him_ , as if they saw nothing else.

"Are you sure?" He found himself asking, unconsciously leaning down a bit. His head was spinning. This was so much worse than the situation in the Cruiser. He wasn't just not doing anything to stop it, but he was actively participating this time. It was stronger than him. Perhaps the Irken was producing some sort of alien pheromones and that was why he was reacting that way. Or maybe he had just lost his mind. _Again_.

Zim didn't answer verbally, but simply pushed himself forwards, efficiently demolishing both Dib's line of thoughts and his every doubt by crashing their mouths together. This time the human, remembering how it had gone the previous one, didn't wait to be bitten and parted his lips instantly, in the hope of sparing himself a set of painful cuts. It didn't really work, but he soon found that he was too busy running his fingers along the thick, silky surface of the alien's antenna and to fight back against Zim's mouth to mind the stinging of those razor-sharp teeth.

* * *

Hi guys!

I'm finally back with a new chapter. Once again, I'm sorry for having taken so long. Things have been kinda crazy and I have a lot to do and to study. I know that I said that I would have tried to post every two weeks, but I might not be able to keep my word on that. Also, part of the reason why I took so long with this one is because I was struggling to write that Halloween fic I mentioned last time (which turned out to be a late November fic). If you want to read it, you can find it on my profile! (yeah, shameless self-promotion).

That said, I hope that this chapter has been worth the wait! Honestly Dib's speech is mostly a very good example of what happens when you listen to the same song far too many times (in this case, "Fire with Fire" by Delain). You end up paraphrasing half of the lyrics and stuff them in your fic. In spite of that, I tried to build the whole scene in a way that wouldn't seem weird or out of place. I think I managed it, and I hope that the boys don't seem OOC! Let me know what you think ^^

Also, yeah, I kind of left you with another cliffhanger here? xD But at least, for once, I concluded something. I guess that this was the confrontation you all have been waiting since after Zim found out the truth...and this is my take on it. I hope it's good enough, considering how much I kept you waiting. I'd hate to have disappointed your expectations, especially since you've been all so nice and supportive.

Alright, I'll stop rambling now, also because, guess what? I have school stuff to do. Thank you to all my readers. You're making this story a wonderful adventure, even if it's awfully frustrating at times. I'm really glad that so many people are enjoying my writing! It means a lot to me.  
And, of course, the most heartfelt thank you goes to the people who have left me comments on the previous chapters. You guys so often make my day (and I'd be lying if I said that i don't need it these days). Thanks for taking the time and having the patience to leave me your thoughts! Btw, sorry if once again I've failed to answer your reviews. I lost track of them -sigh-

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	27. Chapter 27

The kiss was _far_ from being perfect, or even from being deprived of awkwardness and hesitance, but Dib had to admit that it turned out a little less messy than the previous one. Zim still managed to choke him with his stupid alien tongue a couple of times, making him wonder if the Irken was doing it on purpose, but things became smoother once the initial rush had died out and the contact turned into a slower but just as heated exchange. The Irken's increased body heat seemed to be infectious and it had spread all over the human's skin and under it. It made him _burn_ in a way that was at the same time shocking and pleasant, almost as much as it was for his nemesis.

Dib's mind had shut down completely, chasing away every thought that didn't revolve around what he was feeling and physically experiencing. The deep warmth scorching between them, the clumsy but stubborn way in which their mouths and tongues sought each other and merged together, the odd but oh-so-nice texture of Zim's antennae under his fingers, the painful piercing of the Irken's teeth grazing his lips, the sweet taste of the alien saliva mixing with his own blood. It was all too intense to bear, but at the same time he couldn't get enough of it. The odd flavour, the demanding heat, the confused lightness in his head, the unsynchronised bumping of their bodies, the struggle for something he couldn't put into focus.

At one point, the Invader had let go of his antennae, leaving to him the task to keep stroking them, and had once again got a hold of his shirt with one hand, while the other had wrapped loosely around his neck, claws scratching the skin, a stinging warning that he shouldn't try to break away unless he was told to. Not that the teen would have ever thought of doing such a thing. He had quickly discovered, as soon as his rival's ridged tongue had slipped past his lips, that he was in no hurry to flee as he had expected to be.

The heavy possessiveness of the hold, a reflection of the feeling with which his nemesis was single-mindedly focused on devouring his mouth, was _thrilling_ , in a way that was, at the same time, scaring the hell out of him for so many reasons and making him want to never stop, even despite the growing lack of oxygen and the small, painful cuts on his lips. He felt like he could have got addicted to that hot, intense rush of adrenaline, more addicted than he was to their usual clashes and battles. If his thoughts hadn't been so fuzzy, he would have realised how dangerous that path was, but the Irken was _purring_ against him, the loud vibrations passing from the alien's body to his own, and he couldn't bring himself to care about the consequences. Nor about how he had in turn been letting out small, breathy moans against his nemesis's lips for the last several minutes.

Zim, from his part, was almost completely overwhelmed by his own urges. At first, he had been hell-bent on getting rid of the consuming heat that made his skin feel like it was about to melt. He had dived himself into the human's more or less pliant mouth, biting and sucking, ignoring the fact that his eager but awkward movements were causing discomfort to his rival. After the first few minutes, however, the impulse had become less pressing, even if its intensity hadn't diminished, and he had found himself slowing down, his rough plunging turning into a more proper, almost curious exploring. He had even let Dib direct his movements a bit, so that he would have stopped risking choking the teen, his longing for the burning feeling that the wet sliding of their tongues brought him being stronger than his desire to stay fully in control.

The hand that Dib wasn't using to stroke his antennae found the lines of his jaw and he felt the human using it to tilt his head on one side, causing their mouths to fit together more properly. The human pressed forward, as much as the Irken's own grip around his throat allowed him, and that sent a new spark of pleasure running down Zim's spine, joining the small shocks triggered by the firm, slow strokes his nemesis was administering to his sensible appendages. It would have been so easy to just get lost in that messy, shivering pool of sensations, and forget everything else. The idea of completely losing control disgusted him in the back of his mind, but that small voice, the one that was somehow still sober despite the drug and that tried to remind him of whom he was supposed to be, was silenced every time by much more illogical, intoxicated whispers.

After an amount of time the Invader couldn't pinpoint, the heat finally started to fade, sign that the effects of spices were starting to wear out. He let go of the teen's shirt, even if he kept his claws around the other's neck, and grabbed him by the wrist, peeling his fingers away from where they were still stroking his antennae. He felt a small, displeased shock at the loss of feeling, but his head was getting clearer and he managed to ignore it. Still, he indulged in the kiss for a few more moments, allowing the lingering urges to be fully satiated, and then withdrew his tongue from the human's mouth, starting to pull away.

Dib distractedly grasped that the contact was about to come to an end when Zim removed his hand from the top of his head, but he didn't instantly snap out of his dazed state. When the Invader moved away, he couldn't stop himself from following, pushing against the claws holding his throat. After a moment of resistance, the hold loosened and he was allowed to move forward, capturing the alien's mouth one more time, teeth briefly biting the other's thin lips, hard enough to hurt but not to break the Irken's more resilient skin. There was no meeting of tongues this time, but they still pressed hard against each other, chasing the last sparks of pleasure until they dissolved, leaving them both in a thick stupor.

A moment after they had separated, this time for good, Zim was out of the human's lap, causing an unexpected shock of cold to replace the warmth that the hard, alien body had been pressing against him, and Dib let out a small, displeased sound at the loss. However, the disappointment was forgotten as soon as his mind finally started to wake up from that weird trance and caught up with the situation. His already flushed face grew hotter, not in pleasure, but in awkward embarrassment. What had he done? The answer was pretty obvious, even if he really didn't want to ponder it. He had let the Invader "conquer" him again, and this time he had kissed him back and enjoyed it fully, despite the oddness and the absurdity of the situation. Once again, Zim had an excuse for his behaviour, but what about him? Could it be that he was _attracted_ to the space menace, just as Ms. Xander's line of questioning had implied during their talk? And if it was true, as the facts seemed to prove, what was he supposed to do? What did it mean for him?

He bit back a groan, clenching his fists. He was so, so _screwed_. He had no idea of how such a thing could have happened, even if, perhaps, he should have seen the signs. He had always been obsessed with the alien, since the very start, so he should have expected that the slow but inexorable shift that their relationship had undergone during the years would have brought a change in his feelings towards the other. Perhaps guessing that they would have taken _that_ particular turn would have been impossible, but it didn't change the fact that he should have paid more attention. Whether or not it would have mattered, he couldn't know, but at least he would have been more prepared when the doubts would have manifested themselves.

"Your filthy, stupid, human saliva _burns_."

Zim's voice broke the thick silence that had filled the room and interrupted the human's thoughts. The Irken had been eyeing the teen sideways, watching his expression filling at first with shock and then with a painful emotion he hadn't been able to fully recognise. Whatever it was, he had decided that it couldn't be good, just as allowing that prolonged stasis to continue wasn't. Dib clearly was far away from being in the condition to do something about their current situation, so it was up to him. Also, the sooner he snapped the human out of his stupor, the sooner he would have been able to kick him out of his base and get a proper hold on himself.

At first, the Invader had found it hard to look at his nemesis, because of the shame he was feeling and the fear that, if he had locked his eyes back on the other, he would have ended up kissing him again. And this time he wouldn't have been able to use the drug to excuse his actions. He wasn't sure of what gave him the certainty that something of the sort could have happened, but the intuition had been strong enough to leave him stalling for several minutes, the horrifying doubt preventing him from breaking the heavy silence, even when it had started to deeply disturb him.

However, after an intense pondering, he had managed to persuade himself that his concerns were _ridiculous_ , because he had no reason, at least among the ones he was ready to consider, to do such a foolish thing. He had shot a look at his nemesis and instantly the memory of shared body heat and wetness had hit him, but he had fought it back hard enough to smother the hint of longing curiosity whispering to him that he should have tried again. Winning that battle against his own, traitorous mind had given him enough confidence to ignore all those urges and feelings, which were still so new and foreign for him, and focus back on the present. It had been then that he had noticed the expression on the human's face, which had informed him that he wasn't the only one having problems dealing with what had happened.

"What?" Dib asked, startled out of his troubled thoughts. "My… _saliva_?" He blinked, turning to look at the alien, both surprised by the fact the other had spoken and incredulous at what he had said, but, once again, he almost regretted having moved his eyes away from the safe, Zim-free space in front of him. The Irken's posture was closed off and stiffen now, but there was still a hint of purple on his skin and traces of the same substance he had been complaining about on his lips. The teen swallowed at the sight, feeling the sudden impulse to reach out and rub the fluid off the Invader's mouth. Curse the space bug. And curse himself too. There had to be something incredibly wrong with him. Or rather, something more wrong than he had initially thought.

He shook his head, trying to force himself to focus on the talk and not on what he was feeling. "You're complaining because my saliva burnt you _a bit_? That's rich, coming from you!" He managed to shoot back, a hint of actual irritation colouring his voice. "Do you realise how much your stupid alien teeth _hurt_ when you bite me? Or that you risk _choking_ me every time you try to literally shove your cursed tongue down my throat?! I don't know what kind of researches you've been doing on the subject, but you don't literally do _that_ when you kiss someone."

Zim squinted at the teen for a moment, but his expression turned angry in a matter of seconds. "If you cannot keep up with Zim's superior _smooching_ skills, it's _your_ problem, Dib-human, not mine!" He claimed, sounding offended and disgruntled. "And I didn't hear you complaining, worm child. Not even when my tongue was down your useless throat. If anything, the pathetic sounds you were making told me that you agree with Zim." If he had to be honest, he had found his rival's moans more enticing than pathetic, but he wasn't going to admit it, not even to himself. "You have no right to complain if you enjoyed it."

For the umpteenth time, Dib felt a blush spreading on his cheeks. When had the Invader become so attentive? Perhaps he hadn't, but Zim was fated to notice considering the intense focus they had kept on each other during the kiss. He really shouldn't be so surprised. He himself had been aware of every little hiss and sound his nemesis had let out.

"If that applies to me, then it applies to you too. Stop complaining about my saliva. Burning or not, you were enjoying yourself as much as I was," he talked back, deciding that two could play that game. He couldn't deny the obvious, but the Irken couldn't either. Besides, the bickering felt almost normal after what they had shared and he dove into it, hoping that it would have brought back a bit of normalcy. "You were _purring_ , alien scum. Don't think I haven't noticed!"

" _SILENCE_!" The Invader screeched, as expected, the purple hue on his face intensifying. He had realised that he was emitting that purring sound, the same that GIR had compared to the noises Earthen cats made, only when it had been too late to stop. Moreover, the action had been soothing his inner torments and had made the whole experience more pleasant for him. That was the main reason why he had chosen not to stop in any case. This, of course, was another thing he would have never admitted, not even under torture. "I was _drugged_! What's your excuse, filthy creature?"

"You _jumped_ on me. What would you have wanted me to do? To push you away?" The teen argued back, sidestepping the question. He couldn't answer it because he didn't have an excuse and perhaps he was confessing that much by avoiding the inquiry, but at least this way he didn't have to spell it out aloud. A change of subject was needed, and quickly.

"Whatever," he grumbled, but didn't waited for an answer. He knew exactly what to bring up to divert the Irken's attention. "Did you mean it? What you said earlier about conquering the Earth?"

Zim's expression had turned smug when the human hadn't shot back at him, almost ready to remark the fact and shout at the ceiling his victory in that verbal fight, but his nemesis hadn't given him the time, pressing forward his own questions instead. The sudden shift in the discussion caught the alien slightly off guard and his mind took a moment to remember what the other was talking about. The thought of what might have been his new, self-assigned mission had popped out of nowhere in the middle of his haze and what had followed had almost made him discard it. If the teen hadn't brought it up, most likely it would have been several hours before the idea had touched him again.

The self-satisfaction slowly melted away from his face, replaced by a contemplative expression. He recalled what Dib had told him about why he wanted to become a paranormal investigator. Because the mysteries of the supernatural world were his passion and because he wanted to prove a point, to show the rest of the world that he wasn't crazy and that _they_ were the fools. He also remembered what his rival had said during his speech from earlier, about how Zim himself should have stopped allowing everyone to walk over him and showed them whom he was and what he could achieve instead. Conquering the planet that should have become his grave would have made sense, and it would have been symbolic too.

The Irken crossed his arms over his chest, thoughtful. He had always wanted to be an Invader, even when everyone was telling him that he couldn't. Because he was a menace, because he destroyed everything he touched, because he was crazy. Because he was a Defective. However, deep down, he had always known that he could have gotten the job done, that he had a "hidden potential", as his nemesis had called it. He could have still proved his point to the whole universe, but he wouldn't have done it to try and win back the Tallest's favour and respect. He had never had them in the first place. He would have always been nothing but a broken, unacceptable risk in their eyes, as in the ones of every other Irken. He would have done it for himself, to overthrow the same rules that had tried to end him, to prove that he was above them and above every label that had been attached to him together with his faulty PAK. He would have built something to show that the destruction he brought wasn't as sterile as it was accused of being.

"Yes," he answered in the end, after a long moment of silence. He narrowed his eyes, determination blossoming on his face, together with a hint of real, sincere and heartfelt confidence. "You said it yourself. I should stop condoning everything they have done to me. This is Zim's existence and, since they banished me, I am the one to hold the cards now, as your stupid human expression says. I am done letting them humiliate me. As soon as my exile will become official, I will show them who I am. Until then, I'll focus on making preparations to become the ruler of this ball of filthy and to make this ugly place and its inhabitants less…disgusting and more suitable for _me_." He shrugged slightly. "Besides, I've always wanted to be Tallest when I was a smeet."

He nodded to himself, fuelled by a certainty he had thought he would have never experienced again. If he had embraced that plan as his goal, he would have had a mission once again, his existence would have had a _meaning_ once again and he would have satisfied both his instincts and his personal ambitions. He would have been what he had been trained to be and what he had always _wanted_ to be, but at his own terms. He would have been his own leader and also the leader firstly of the Earth and then of the nation he would have created, starting from that small planet, which was as discarded and underestimated by everyone as he himself was. He couldn't have thought of a more fitting irony.

The determined expression on his face consolidated. It would have taken a lot of work, a lot of sacrifices and most likely a lot of sufferance too, but he could bear it. He would have endured the failures and built victories above the ashes they would have left behind. The same faulty PAK that had damned him to his hideous fate would have been what would have healed each of the wounds he would have gained and helped him back on his feet each time he would have been shoved on the ground. He would have rained his very special kind of doom over the heads of whoever would have tried to stand between him and his aim, forcing them to face the ugly destruction that only an Irken Defective could bring. He would have turned the traits that should have signed his demise into the tools of his success.

Another thought suddenly presented to his mind, distracting him from his revived ambitions, and he turned his gaze back on the human from where he had moved it on the floor while pondering the idea. His nemesis had never answered the question he had asked after he had told him about his possible new mission. He had thought to have posed it in the heat of the moment, pushed by the same burning rush that had made him lace on Dib's mouth as if his life had depended on it. However, now that his mind was more lucid and calmer, he realised that truly he wanted a reply. Not just to satisfy his curiosity, not just because he needed to know if the teen would have been the first obstacle he would have had to overcome. Those motivations were valid, especially the second, but the truth was that he craved a specific kind of answer, one that he had never thought he would have come to hope for.

"What about you, Dib? Will you stand against Zim once again? Or will you stand _by_ me?" He asked in a completely serious tone. His stance was tense once again, but there was no sign of hostility in it. "Will you be my sworn enemy again? Or…" His mind looked for the right words to express the concept without spelling it out and he ended up echoing a similar sentence to the one the other had spoken during his speech. "Or will we find another way to work the situation out?"

This time the question didn't catch Dib off guard. He had been expecting it, knowing that the alien would have most likely brought it up as soon as he would have answered his own inquiry. He was well aware that he hadn't offered a reply the first time he had been asked. He wouldn't have this time either, because he didn't really know what to say. He almost scoffed. Him at loss of words seemed to be the trend of that conversation.

"Zim…" He started, sounding almost tired and having no idea of where his words would have taken him.

On one side, the idea of working with the alien was simply _ridiculous_. They had spent _years_ trying to kill each other, more or less seriously, and standing in each other's way with all the determination they were capable of. He didn't think that he could have entrusted his planet in the claws of a being from outer space, of an alien who had a thing and a natural talent for destruction. Zim seemed to be implying that he would have spared mankind and that he wanted to "make the Earth better", but that could have meant anything. Yes, it could have been that the Irken would have shared his knowledge to help humans reaching goals they would have taken many decades, if not centuries, to achieve, but it could have also turned out that the other simply meant to enslave the humans and use them as the labour force to build his empire. It could have meant that the Invader would have become either an enlightened ruler, open to cooperate with the people he was determined to lead, or a cruel, merciless tyrant, just as his Tallest seemed to be. There were too many risks and too much uncertainty. For that reason, he shouldn't have even allowed his nemesis the benefit of the doubt.

On the other hand, though, he was tempted to. If Zim had really been planning to turn his people into slaves, he would have never asked him for assistance. If he had been aiming for utter domination, for a throne that he would have occupied alone while everyone else crawled under his feet, he wouldn't have been looking for a helper. Dib was almost tempted to say "partner", but that would have been pushing it. The alien still saw humans as an inferior race and he doubted that the Irken would have ever changed his mind on the matter. And yet, the fact that he seemed willing to cooperate had to mean something. He didn't believe that it was a trick. He had the feeling that his rival would have been done with everything that concerned deceit and betrayal for a while, after what had happened to him. Besides, the humankind seemed to be heading for its self-destruction. Every day people appeared to care less and less about what happened around them. Gaz had said it too a few times. Their race seemed to be begging to be conquered, to have someone else taking the reins and dragging it back on track.

He rubbed the side of his face, feeling torn. What should he do? Reject the idea as the insanity it clearly was and stick to his self-assigned role as defender of Earth? Or choose to take the risk in the name of a better, brighter future and give that unlikely alliance a try?

"I honestly don't know, Zim," he ended up saying, because it was the truth. He needed time to ponder all the pros and the cons, to clear his mind and sort out his priorities. He needed to understand if he could _trust_ the Invader enough. Enough to safely believe that he would have worked for both his personal benefit _and_ the well-being of the planet, without putting the first above the second. Enough to be sure that the other wouldn't have changed his mind and considered the Earth expendable, if the circumstances would have made such a sacrifice convenient for him. However, to do all those things, he first needed to understand where he and Zim stood with each other. "I need to think about it. And right now I'm not exactly in the conditions to think straight."

The Irken's expression turned a bit tenser, but he shrugged, hiding the hint of disappointment he had felt. What a foolish sentiment, as foolish as him thinking that the human would have jumped on the chance he was offering him. The stupid pig still had his beliefs and great values and he should have seen that he wouldn't have given them up just because they had shared an embarrassing, heart-to-heart talk and a disgusting exchange of fluids. The drug had to be still messing with his brain, because otherwise he would have never had that foolish hope. Even if, as a small voice whispered from the back of his head, Dib hadn't told him "no". Everything was still possible.

"Be it as you wish, human," he stated flatly, crossing his arms on his chest and lifting his chin a bit. He had been trained to work on his own and he would have carried out his mission alone this time too, if he wasn't offered any other alternative. After all, he had never had the support of the Empire either, not for real at least. He would have worked around the difficulties as they would have been presented to him. He had done it in the past, so he could do it again. No matter how appealing the idea of having a proper ally, and of not being completely alone once again, might have appeared. "But don't expect Zim to wait for you. I know what I want to do and I will keep working with that goal in mind. I don't care where you stand, Dib-worm. Just know that, if you choose to oppose me, I will have no other choice but to crush you."

Despite the not so friendly tone that the Invader had used, Dib found himself grinning slightly. Zim's eyes looked less empty now that his decision was starting to cement in his mind and it was a relief. No more creepy void stares and endless days of cruel gloominess. Perhaps, the alien wouldn't have gone back to be as loud and insane as he used to be, but that was for the best. For the Irken himself and for the human's mental sanity.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, space boy," he commented, his tone becoming lighter. "I'll keep an eye on you, because I don't trust you not to make a mess, even in the name of whatever "greater good" you might be aiming for in your insane green head. And I'll let you know when I make up my mind." He stretched out a hand, in a gesture that could have been taken either as a joke or seriously, depending on the Invader. He would have taken whatever the other chose to see in it. "Till then, enemies again?"

Zim stared at the hand he was being offered, a frown setting on his face, but after a moment he reached out and took it, claws wrapping firmly around the human's fingers. "Enemies again," he confirmed with a confident nod. "And this means that we won't talk about this disastrous cinnamon incident of doom ever again. Or about this disgustingly sentimental conversation we had."

"Let's say that we'll forget that this whole day happened," Dib offered, squeezing his rival's hand back before letting it go. He was glad that the Irken seemed as eager as he was to leave behind the way in which they had opened up to each other, and also the _physical_ consequences of such a choice. Drug or not, it had been too weird for comfort. However, he had the feeling that he would have had a very hard time to just forget the events, especially considering what he might have realised about himself and about some of the many, contrasting, different feelings he had for the alien. Speaking of said realisation, it was a miracle that he hadn't freaked out yet, but perhaps his mind was somehow managing to keep that particular crisis for when he would have been alone. Better that way. He had already embarrassed himself far too much for the day.

A sigh escaped his lips, as he shoved those thoughts away. "You know, lately I've been wondering when things had got so complicated," he commented after a moment of silence, wrapping an arm around the edge of the couch. "I'm not saying that I liked them better when I could still delude myself into thinking that they were…well, either black or white, but…my head didn't hurt so much back then."

"Zim approves your solution," the Irken nodded, oblivious to his nemesis's discomfort. He was tempted to scoff at the human's next comment, but in the end he decided against it. He had to admit that the other was right. Everything was much simpler when he had still been persuaded of being an appreciated, great Invader of the Empire. "For Zim, that happened when I learnt the truth. Even if staying on this ball of dirt had already started to…how's that expression? Blur the threads?"

"Blur the lines," Dib corrected, but there was no trace of mockery in his tone. "And it makes sense. There's this saying that, more or less, states that life is easier if you're blissfully ignorant of all the problems and the uncomfortable truths. I think that the world refusing to see you as an alien is a big example of that. They all live oblivious and unconcerned and I'm going insane to save their ungrateful asses every day."

Zim eyed his nemesis for a moment, pondering whether or not to mock him. He quickly decided not to, since he didn't want to start a fight. Perhaps another time. "Ready to bet that Zim has an even more striking example?" He challenged instead, sounding smug.

GIR blinked from the spot on the floor he had been occupying till that moment, tilting his head as he noticed that both the teen and his master were staring at him. He pulled the lollipop he had been munching out of his mouth and moved his eyes between the two of them. "Why are you both looking at me?" He asked, sounding genuinely confused.

The human couldn't help the laugh that slipped past his lips. "Alright, I guess this is "victory for Zim", isn't it?" He conceded, amused, air-quoting the words with both his hands.

"Of course it is," the alien claimed, sounding almost triumphant. "Did you have any doubts? I _always_ win."

He hesitated for a moment. Both the experiment and the conversation had come to an end. They had even agreed on how they should behave concerning what he would have called, from that moment on, "Freaky Accident Part II". What was he supposed to do now? Should he kick the teen out of his base as he had been planning to do since the end of the kiss? Or should he ask him if he wanted to…stay, as foolish as it sounded?

Luckily for him, Dib seemed to be having the same thoughts, because the other saved him from the trouble of making a choice by standing up. "Silly me for doubting," he joked, fixing the front of his T-shirt that was still all creased where the Invader's claws had been gripping at it. A hint of indecision passed in his eyes, but then he started to talk again. "It's better if I go now. Dad will be home for dinner and Gaz will murder me if I'm late."

He cleared his throat a bit. That wasn't the only reason why he wanted to leave. There was a small part of him that was tempted to stay, just to see what else could have happened to make that day even more absurd, but he was aware that he needed to take the time he had asked for and wrap his head around all the issues that had opened for him in those few hours. "Uh, I'll see you tomorrow at Skool?"

Zim jumped on his feet in turn, following him towards the main door. "Do you really need to ask such foolish questions, Dib-beast? But yes, Zim will put up with your stupid presence tomorrow too," he shot back, without losing a beat and, especially, without showing the relief he was feeling. He flung the door open, stepping aside to let the human out. "And it was about time that you removed your stinky self from my base. I have work to do. A whole planet to conquer."

The teen shook his head as he crossed the threshold. "You like having me around. It's time that you admit it," he talked back with much more ease than he had believed possible. He raised a hand to wave, shooting his rival a look from above his shoulder. "Try not to blow yourself up while you're at it, space boy."

"I hope you'll choke on your nourishment, Earth monkey," the Irken answered, a bit irritated because his comeback wasn't as good as he would have wanted it to be, but it was all he could come up with.

Their eyes met for a moment and they held each other's gaze. Then Dib turned away once again and Zim closed the door, shutting the rest of the world out. None of them looked back as they made their way, the first back home and the second up to his Space Station, but the same awareness lingered in their thoughts. That day had somehow marked an important turn in their lives and in their relationship, a turn that was the consequence of everything that had happened in the past two months and a half. It was impossible to say where it would have led them, but one thing was certain, whether they chose to acknowledge it or not: ignoring the change, this time, would have been impossible.

* * *

Hi everyone!

Once again, sorry for the delay, but my exams start next month and between interships and lessons I have very little time and energies left to work on my writing =.= Plus, I had a few bday presents to write down and those took quite some time! I hope that the chapter was worth the wait, considering how many of you were eager to see where Zim's and Dib's talk (and that kiss xD) would have led! I'll try to get the next chapter done by Christmas's Eve, as a present to all my lovely readers! I was considering writing a holiday themed one-shot, but...I don't think I'll have the time for it, so I'd rather not keeping you guys waiting on this fic instead ^^" I've already started to work on the draft for the next chapter and I aim to post it on the 25th, as a present!

So, this chapter is the continuation of the previous one, as I had anticipated you, and this is how I chose to wrap up the mess Zim and Dib's meeting has turned into. And, finally, I'm giving our favourite Irken some good news (together with shoving in some shippy parts u.u). About time, isn't it? xD Even if now there are oh-so-many things both boys have to sort out, about themselves and with each other. I hope you enjoyed how I managed the whole situation!

I want, once again, to thank everyone who's been reading my writing, this fic and also the other stuff. It's not my...shiniest period and knowing that I can produce decent stuff someone can enjoy helps my mood ^^ I truly appreciate any kind of support!  
I'm the most grateful to the people who leave me reviews (especially the ones who stick with me in every single chapter...you're like a ray of sun, guys, truly)! I hope I'll never disappoint you!

To the **Guests** who left me those reviews on the previous chapters, thank you so much for taking the time to write them ^^ I truly appreciated it! And I'm glad that you're enjoying the story so far :3

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	28. Chapter 28

The relief that Dib felt after getting away from Zim's base, and especially from the alien himself, didn't last long. He managed to keep his mind more or less blank during the time of the walk back to his house, focusing all his thoughts on each step he took, but as soon as he had crossed the threshold his willpower stopped being enough to keep the troublesome thoughts at bay. He wasn't trying to avoid the issues at hand, because he knew that neither could be ignored, but he had hoped that he would have been allowed to rest and metabolise the information he had received before facing them. He had clearly been too optimistic, much to his dismay.

Nothing of what he tried to do to keep his mind occupied worked. He spent a whole episode of Mysterious Mysteries just staring at the screen, without seeing the images that passed before his eyes. He hardly tasted the food that was put in his plate at dinner and it was a miracle that he managed to focus enough to realise when his father was addressing him, trying in vain to make him part of the conversation. All he could see and hear were flashes of images, both real facts and speculations, and fragments of the conversation he had had with his nemesis in the afternoon. Thoughts of what could have happened if he had allowed Zim to conquer the Earth alternated themselves with small details of the other's form. He honestly didn't know what was driving him crazier, the succession of future apocalyptic and utopian scenarios that his mind created or the fact that he kept reliving the feeling of the Irken's mouth pressed against his.

By the end of the meal he had given up, reluctantly accepting that he wouldn't have got away with it and that he would have had to deal with at least one of his two problems that night, if he didn't want to spend it sleeplessly struggling with his own thoughts. He was tempted to go for trying to decide what he should do about the Invader's offer, but he eventually resolved to leave that one for when his mind would have been more rested. The reasons were two. First of all, he really wanted to get some sleep and examining all his options would have taken _hours_ , if not longer. Secondly, to be able to consider all the factors in his final decision, he would have needed to clear his head about his personal situation with Zim first. There was no running away from _that_ , even if he wished he could have. So, he was left with climbing the stairs, not without a hint of reluctance, and ignoring the umpteenth weird glance that Gaz shot him, for once feeling very glad that his sister was so determined to stay out of his business. He wouldn't have known how to explain her what was bothering him.

Once the door of his room was safely shut behind his back, he allowed himself to take deep breath and to let out a just as heavy sigh before making his way to the bed. The weather was starting to get warmer, so he opened the window and laid down, his amber eyes instantly locking on the stars, out of habit. It was incredible how those faraway lights still fascinated him, after all the years and the almost sleepless nights he had spent stargazing. He felt constantly attracted to them, charmed and mesmerised. They hadn't lost their allure even after having delivered him, four years earlier, the being who had become the worst pain in his neck ever, for too many reasons. After all, for better or for worse, Zim was also so much more than that. He was his nemesis but also the confirmation of all his hopes and views. That considered, past the hate that had instantly blossomed between them, how could the Invader not have inspired in him the same fascination he felt for the stars?

The teen groaned, covering his face with his hands. There it came again, that silly poetic hint that he had accidentally slipped in the motivational speech he had addressed his rival a few hours before. Had the circumstances been different, he would have been proud of his rhetoric, but the last thing he wanted was to sound _lyrical_ while he was thinking about an alien invader, or better, a _monster_ from outer space. He was ready to admit that Zim had a big role in his life, that he was obsessed with him, both because he was a threat to his planet and because he was the material, walking incarnation of everything he had always believed in, but that was all. Admitting that he didn't hate the other as much as he used to do didn't mean that he _liked_ him. Being able to get along with him and work with him seemed nice too, at least for what he could tell from his limited experiences of the two things, but that was it. An observation, a sterile fact. The idea of the two of them being allies or _friends_ was almost too absurd to become a reality, despite what he had felt and what had happened that afternoon. He _couldn't_ be attracted to the moron. No way. His head was clearly confused, _very_ confused.

He felt a sudden wave of irritation rising inside him. It was simply _nuts_. The fact that he had enjoyed kissing the alien, both times, didn't mean anything. He was about to turn fifteen, his body chemistry was a mess because of that tricky stage called puberty, with all its inconvenient cravings and unexpected urges. He had heard of teens having the weirdest and wildest dreams about people they weren't attracted to. His reaction to the act had been a natural, physiological response to a situation that was made for triggering his hormonal drive. In a way, he had been as drugged as the Irken in that moment.

He clenched his fists and pushed them into the mattress, gritting his teeth in a fit of actual anger and trying to cling to the thought. That was it. Whatever realisation he had thought he had had was just the consequence of a temporary hormones-induced stupor. A fake delusion. It was already insane that he was considering coexisting with his nemesis _peacefully_ , after all the times Zim had physically and psychologically hurt him, abused him and tortured him, after all the occasions in which the bastard had attempted to end his life and had tried to destroy his planet and race. He couldn't forget it, not even for a moment. He had been a moron to have those doubts in the first place and he would have been an even greater fool to waste just one more second on the subject. He should be done with it already and use his time for something more important and, especially, more _real_ than a stupid, meaningless, _sick_ fantasy.

He nodded to himself, taking in a breath, in the attempt to both calm down and direct his thoughts elsewhere. If that was the truth, he should have been able to do the latter thing easily. And yet, he couldn't. His mind, ignoring his commands, wondered back to how glad he had felt seeing the Irken's eyes losing most of that ugly emptiness that had reigned over them for over two months. Back to how smooth the other's skin was despite its thickness and to how curious and fascinated he had been by the texture of the alien's antennae. He should have found the green skin, if not repulsive, at least unsettling, and instead, once again, he was forced to admit that it was a very _nice_ shade of green. And that the way in which Zim's magenta orbs stood out against it, especially when they were shining with the thrilled heat of adrenaline or were dark with that burning, insane possessiveness, made him want to get lost in them. No matter the dangers that awaited ahead for him inside the Invader's crazy, broken world.

Dib lifted his head from the mattress, just to bang it back against it immediately, his annoyance deflating instantly. Who was he trying to fool? A blind man could have seen that he had some sort of twisted feelings for the Irken, and he most likely had had them for a while. The fact that he had been too dense or too much in denial to acknowledge them didn't mean that they hadn't been there. He _was_ a fool, not for having let the doubt throw him off, but because even now, with hard facts supporting the evidence, he was still trying to talk himself out from seeing the truth. He mocked Zim so often for his bad habit of denying the obvious, but he himself wasn't much better, if he had to be truly honest. Whenever something was too inconvenient, he either chose to ignore it or pretended that everything was fine and exactly how he wanted it to be. Like he did with the growing tension between him and his father, just to mention another striking example.

He brought his hands back to his face and rubbed his eyes under the lenses of his glasses. He was hopeless. And he was really a _freak_. Why couldn't he have done more than agreeing with Gaz's comments, that drunken night? Why hadn't he suddenly discovered that he liked Zita, even if she always acted like a bitch towards him? Or that he wouldn't have minded dating Gretchen, now that she was cute and had proven herself to be a really smart girl? Or even that he had the hots for his sister's detention companion? Of course not. That would have been too easy. Of course he had to find out that his sexuality existed by realising that he was attracted to the resident _alien_. Did that make him a xenophile? He knew that he shouldn't let prejudices influence him, especially considering that he had always prided himself to be much more open-minded than most people, but that did sound very _bad_. Especially considering that the alien involved was _Zim_. He was really, _utterly_ screwed.

Dib swallowed loudly, rubbing his temples. He shouldn't freak out so soon. Even if he had been looking at the Irken in _that_ way, part of the problem could still be his age's fault. It didn't mean that he would be stuck with that weird… _crush_ , for the lack of a better term, forever. Or that he should take it for more than it really was. The alien was the closest person to him and, especially recently, there had been a deeper change in their interactions. During the years, he had grown sure that the Irken didn't really want him dead, just as he didn't want to kill the Invader anymore. The teen had started to understand what the word "nemesis" really meant to the Zim. He had noticed that his rival felt possessively protective of him, in his own perverse way, since he seemed to hate the thought of anyone but him, and Gaz, hurting him. Also, they had been doing other things together, aside from fighting and being reluctant allies. And, now that the Invader was facing his own identity crisis, truths and traits about his nemesis he had never seen before had been suddenly brought out. He had come to realise that there was much more to the alien, behind the monster mask Dib had so stubbornly wanted to see above anything else. It made sense that it had been Zim to capture yet that other form of his interest. The moron was pretty much everything he thought about, most of the time. This attraction was just the way in which his obsession had adapted to the shift in his mentality and in their relationship.

The teen felt the dejected agitation in his chest fading a bit. The one he had just offered to himself was a good explanation. It made sense, even if he was still deeply uncomfortable with it. However, the feeling was there and there wasn't anything he could do about it. He couldn't force it to go away. Besides, it could have been worse. Attraction or not, he still knew where his priorities stood. He wouldn't have hesitated to put his planet and race first, because that was the right thing to do. And, all considered, he had had the epiphany in a good moment, since he and Zim had mostly reached some sort of truce. Now, if only the Irken had turned out to be willing to work for the _benefit_ of Earth, making the planet a real capital for his future empire, everything would have been much easier. He could have even dealt with that attraction being something more than a temporary, hormones-induced infatuation. He wasn't sure of how much he felt for the Invader, but if they had become allies, _friends_ even, he could have lived with almost any level of liking.

His thoughts moved off track slightly, now that his mind was more at ease, and his focus shifted from himself to the alien. Zim had never said anything explicit on the topic, but Dib felt sure enough to think that romance and sexuality weren't something Irkens bothered with. They were artificially engineered, spent most of their lives being trained and doing their assigned tasks and were clearly more interested in invading than in anything else. His nemesis had openly stated that he knew what kissing was because he had made _researches_ on the topic, so he could assume that the other had never heard of the act or of anything similar before. Or at least that, even if he had witnessed a comparable mating ritual, it had never sparked the slightest interest in him. Besides, what the Computer saing that it had to explain to its master what an aphrodisiac was and did seemed to confirm his suspicions that Zim knew little to nothing about everything concerning the sexual and romantic sphere. Perhaps just the most basic notions of biology.

The teen scratched his head. Could Irkens even _feel_ romantic emotions? Or something close to that? There was his nemesis's crazy shows of possessiveness and the Invader seemed to care for GIR to an extent, but that was hardly enough to assure him that the other could actually get attached to something or someone. Zim had had, till the moment in which he had discovered the truth, a deep, undying devotion for the Empire and his Tallest, but that was part of the mindset that was encoded in his PAK. He had never heard the alien mentioning a friend or anyone who could classify as one. Ms. Xander had said too that Dib himself seemed to be the closest and perhaps the only bond Zim had in his life aside from his SIR Unit. So, assuming that his interest in the Irken went beyond curious fascination and physical attraction, could have the Invader ever reciprocated him, in the hypothetical and unlikely case in which he had decided to do something about his feelings? He was very tempted to say that it was a lost cause and that there wasn't a single chance that Zim would have ever considered even just kissing him again, for sport, without being drugged or intoxicated.

Dib sighed, turning his eyes back towards the stars. That was a line of thinking that he shouldn't even ponder, if he wanted to be realistic. If there was the slightest, minimal chance that the Irken could be, at least in part, attracted to him too, it would have been just out of morbid curiosity, unhealthy co-dependency and need to express his possessiveness in yet another, more significant form. There was no way that a deeper emotional attachment would have been reciprocated. His best choice was to do nothing at all about the knowledge, if not learning how to properly live with it, ignoring it when was needed and, for the rest, not allowing to it to mess with his objectivity and decisions. Hopefully, it would have eventually faded, as most unrequited feelings did.

"Not bad for a major freak out," he mumbled to himself, with tired amusement. He had dealt with the issue quite well, considering how _huge_ it was. He was far from being completely at peace with it, but at least he had overcome the walls of denial and had a more lucid view of what he could and shouldn't do about it. Now, if only he couldn't have gone to sleep with the certainty that he wouldn't have had weird dreams about shining stars, pinkish spaceships, green skin, evil laughter and magenta eyes, he would have been peachy. Unfortunately, you couldn't have everything in life, so he would have had to do with what he had achieved. Besides, he still had an alliance to ponder, in the following days, and that decision, unlike the other, more personal one, would have had an impact on the fate of the whole planet. _Priorities_. That was what he should focus on.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

Gaz frowned moving her eyes between his brother, who was sat next to her, and the alien, who instead was occupying the seat in in front of hers. Dib was looking everywhere but in Zim's direction, while the Irken's eyes were stubbornly stuck on his stupid alien tablet. The tension was so thick that it was starting to disturb her, even if she had done her best to ignore it. She didn't know what was more tempting, whether to stand up and go eating her lunch elsewhere or to grab the two morons and butt their heads together, so that they would have stopped whatever they were doing.

She had already noticed that something was off the day before, when Dib had come home after having spent the whole afternoon somewhere with the Invader. She had been sure that he would have either bragged about having finally managed to make Zim talk to him or sulked and complained in case of failure, but the older teen had done none of those things. He had silently sat in front of the TV, watching his idiotic show, but at the same time looking so distracted that he most likely hadn't heard a word of what the guy on the screen was saying. He had been awfully quiet at dinner too, not speaking unless he was addressed directly and after that he had gone straight to his room. When she had moved upstairs to go to bed, over an hour later, she had found him staring at the stars out of his window, the same distracted, troubled expression still on his face.

She let out a low growl, hitting more violently the buttons of her console. She hadn't asked the previous night, but now she was starting to regret not having at least told her brother to be _done_ with it. The expression had been there all morning too, even if it had been a bit less intense, just to get deeper again when Zim had joined them. The alien's presence seemed to have added an awkward agitation to the mix, which clearly hadn't helped. Not to mention that she had had the displeasure to find out that, apparently, her sibling wasn't the only one to have a problem with whatever had happened between the two morons. The Invader had hardly greeted them, before dumping his GIR-made lunch on the table and pulling out his tablet. He hadn't breathed out a single word after that, keeping himself busy with munching the waffles and reading.

Gaz rolled her eyes. She had been desiring not to have to listen to the Irken's screeches and to her sibling's ramblings for a long time, but if this awkward, unbearable tension was what she had to put up with in exchange for some quiet, then perhaps she preferred the noise.

"So, what's with this annoying silence treatment you're giving to each other?" She asked, without lifting her eyes from her game and without beating around the bush. She was being nice and asking before starting to kick the crap out of them, so they had better have an answer for her. A _good_ one. "Did you two have some idiotic rivals' quarrel?"

Dib instantly tensed next to her. He should have known that the girl wouldn't have kept quiet forever, especially considering how she had grown more and more irritated as the time passed. She hadn't been happy with his most recent attitude, but she had seemed willing to put up with it, until Zim had come and joined them for lunch. At that point, the air around them had become so thick that not even his sister, with how skilful she was at being indifferent, could have simply ignored it. Moreover, it had to be said that Gaz never missed a chance to unload her constant discontent on whoever gave her the slightest pretext to.

He lowered his head a bit. That situation was his fault. When he had finally managed to fall asleep, the night before, he had been more or less sure that he would have managed to be around the Irken without too many troubles, despite how fresh his epiphany still was. That certainty, however, had crumbled as soon as said Invader had walked inside their class, right before the start of the first period. The teen had instantly felt torn between the urge to stare and the one to get the hell out of the room. So much for acting normally and being able to live with his realisation. If before he had always been hyperaware of where the alien was and of what he was doing, now he couldn't help noticing every little thing, from the slightest movement to the smallest change in his rival's expression. He had been hardly aware of anything else that wasn't Zim. He had even crushed into a wall during one of the breaks because he had been too distracted to notice where he was going. Of course, everyone had laughed at him. The only good thing had been that the Invader had seemed to remain oblivious of the accident.

He licked his lips. He knew that it was just a phase, luckily, and that he would have stopped embarrassing himself in such a showy way as soon as he would have wrapped his mind completely around the issue. However, he was also aware that it would have taken some time and he didn't know if he could survive it, especially if people started to ask questions as Gaz was doing or, even worse, to make hypotheses and spread inconvenient rumours.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Gaz-sister," Zim's voice said, snapping the older teen out of his thoughts. The alien had quickly lifted his eyes from his tablet, locking his fake violet irises on the girl for a moment, before moving them quickly back to the screen of his device.

The Invader had noticed too that Dib was acting weird, but he hadn't cared enough to investigate. Or rather, he hadn't wanted to, not after what they had shared the previous afternoon. He still felt both irritation and confusion for having showed weakness in front of his nemesis and having allowed the other to _comfort_ him, even. Moreover, there were the lingering humiliation left behind by his "experiment" and the mixed feelings, which had little to do with disgust and anger, that the experience had left inside him. Focusing on his project had seemed the best choice, since working on his machine always absorbed all his concentration and thoughts. Unfortunately, his attention had wavered as soon as he had found himself stuck in the same room with the human, his mind swinging back and forth between calculations and blueprints and the teen himself. The fact that Dib had been alternating staring at him with looking away and wearing the same troubled expression he was sporting now hadn't helped the alien's already ruined focus.

"I think you know very well," Gaz shot back, the irritation in her voice heating up immediately. She hadn't liked the reply she had got and she was very close to getting down to business and beat the explanation out of them. "You're the moron here, not me."

"Gaz, please. It's really…nothing important," Dib stepped in, noticing the frown that had started to form on the Irken's face. Zim might have started to recover from having been rejected and betrayed, but he could tell that those insults still struck too close to home and he didn't want to risk a bad reaction from his rival. On the other hand, though, he knew that his sister wouldn't have been content with a vague reply and a plea to let the matter go. Time for compromising. "Listen, we'll stop…this, and we won't bother you, but can you just not ask about it?"

The girl moved her murderous gaze from the Invader to her brother. She had to admit that she was _almost_ curious to get to know what was going on, but the promise of being rid of that stupid, irritating tension was a much better option for her, even if it meant never finding out what had happened. Perhaps it would have been better that way. Judging from how the two idiots were acting, it had to be something incredibly stupid.

" _Fine_ , but you both have to be done with it this instant," she commanded, with just a hint of reluctance. Her eyes shifted back to the alien. Even if she had decided that she didn't want to get involved, it didn't mean that she would have stopped tormenting them, as a payback for having been forced to suffer through their antics. "Zim, are you coming over after school? I'm sure that my stupid brother won't mind, since you two are _done_ with whatever you've been doing."

Dib found himself shaking his head frantically, eyes wide with desperation. He needed time to think, with a clear, lucid mind, to decide what to do about his nemesis's new aim and he couldn't have done anything of the sort with Zim in his living room. Even if he had locked himself in his room, he would have still been hyperaware of the alien downstairs, also because the Irken wasn't able to be quiet, especially when he gamed with Gaz. He dared to shoot a glare to his sister. She was doing it on purpose, he knew it. And there was nothing he could do to stop her.

With a huge effort, he forced himself to look at Zim, more or less destroying all the work he had put into avoiding meeting the other's eyes. The Invader didn't seem more eager than he was to spend time in his company, so, perhaps, he would have done them both a favour and said "no" to the girl, for once. His hopes, however, were instantly crushed as he spotted a hint of malicious amusement in the Irken's orbs, before the latter bent his head over the screen once again.

"Zim is on a very tight schedule, Gaz-sister, but I can spare a couple of hours and come over after your foodening time, tonight," the alien ended up answering. If he had to be honest, he would have preferred staying on his Station, finishing his report for Purple and working on his machine. And keeping away from his nemesis. However, he had noticed the horrified desperation in the human's eyes when the girl had asked him to join her. The temptation to torment his rival had become too strong to resist, even if it meant that he would have to put up with the very same tension they were supposed to make disappear. "Is that fine with you?"

Gaz nodded, fully returning her attention to her game. "Don't be too late," she stated, managing to use the most threatening tone she was capable of even if she looked calmer now. "And I don't want to have to deal with you two being weird tonight. Or tomorrow. Or ever again. Fix whatever is going on, if you care for your well-being."

Zim scoffed at her threat, trying and failing to look untouched by it, while Dib simply groaned and fought the impulse to bang his head against the table. Just great. Was it really so hard to ask for some peace and quiet? Apparently, it was. Perhaps, in the future, he should have thought about it twice before disturbing his sister when she wasn't in the right mood to condone his slips and rambling. She was clearly starting to move from physical beating to psychological torture to get back at him and, while he could handle the first thing even if he hated it, he had his hands too full to deal with the second. And, of course, the Irken had to join her in making things harder for him. Leave it to Zim to never miss the chance to mess with him and be a jerk about it.

"I'm not joining you two," he stated, poking his lunch and trying to sound casual. "Watching the alien scum having his ass handed to him gets boring, after a while." It was a huge lie, because he would have _never_ tired of seeing the incredulous and outraged expression that blossomed on his nemesis's face every time Gaz won a match, but he needed something to say to break the awkward silence that had fallen on them once again. He then pointed his fork towards the tablet the alien was holding. "Still working on that…filtering machine?"

The Invader shot the older teen a glare. "Zim won't lose this time," he claimed, even if he knew that he most likely would have. Then his expression turned more suspicious. "Why should I tell you what I'm working on? So that you can stand in my way? Foolish creature! _Never_."

Dib rolled his eyes. "Oh come on, space boy, drop the act. It was almost a rhetorical question," he grumbled under his breath, but he felt a bit better. The bickering was sounding a little forced, but Gaz's frown had distended slightly, which meant that she was satisfied with it. "You know that I have no reason to mingle in your business this time, if that machine does what you said."

The hostility didn't fade from the Irken's face, even if, deep down, he knew that his rival had a point. They had roles to play, though, and he would have stuck to them. They made everything easier, more manageable and understandable. "How do I know that you aren't just trying to trick the Mighty Zim into revealing his secret plans?!"

"When will you get rid of that insane paranoia of yours?! You told me your plans already, alien scum! It's a simple yes or no question!"

" _LIES_! You're lying! Zim told you nothing, worm child!"

The girl rolled her eyes, but she let them go on discussing and yelling at each other. She wasn't pleased with all that noise, but at least that was something she had grown accustomed to, even if she would have never admitted it. The way in which the fight had started had been a bit odd, since her brother had more or less stated that, for once, he wasn't trying to stop the alien's plans. It made her wonder once again what might have happened the previous day, but she quickly shrugged the matter off. It wasn't _so_ important, all considered. Not until the two acted as they were supposed to do and didn't try to drown her in their stupid awkwardness.

She briefly pondered if she should have let them know that she hadn't invited Zim over for a gaming session or not, but in the end she discarded the idea. If he had known, the alien moron could have suddenly decided that he didn't have space in his "tight schedule" for it. Besides, payback would have been more effective if they hadn't had the chance to prepare themselves psychologically to the fact that they would have been stuck sitting next to each other for a couple of hours. Because, if Dib thought that she would have allowed him to flee in his room, he was very _wrong_. He would have stayed and they wouldn't have annoyed her. If they had, she would have unleashed her robotic toys on them and turned the movie night she had planned into a real-life show, aimed to satisfy her darkest enjoyment.

* * *

Wow, I can't believe that I actually managed to respect my word on posting this time! It's a bit of a miracle xD I apologise for the typos you might have found (more than the usual), because I didn't have the time to proof read it properly, and I won't have it today either! ^^" I'm kinda in a hurry right now too, so I'll keep it short! Also, it might take a while for the next chapter because I have exams starting in two weeks and A LOT to study!

So, you people have been wondering how Dib would have reacted to what happened with Zim? Here's the answer! Pretty much he isn't dealing with it right now xD Even if in the first part you can basically read him going through the classic five stages (denial, anger, bargain, depression, acceptance) xD Kudos to whoever can tell which paragraphs are about each stage u.u  
Anyway, apparently all Zim and Dib have gained for now it's Gaz's annoyance...which never means good for them (but means another movie night for you guys in the next chapter u.u)

Alright, this is all from me for today! Thanks to everyone who's still reading this endless bunch of silliness and angst! I truly appreciate you sticking with me. It means the world! A special thank you goes, as always, to my amazing reviewers, who never miss to take the time to put up with me and my weird ideas! Thanks a lot guys!

I hope you all will have great holidays, whether you celebrate them or not, and however you celebrate them!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	29. Chapter 29

No one dared to ruin Gaz's plan when it manifested itself for what it was, even if Dib made a small, weak attempt at protesting and claimed that he would have preferred spending the night in his room. It was useless to say that a glare from the scary girl was enough to beat him into submission and make him sit down on the couch, once again in the spot between her and a very disgruntled Zim. The Invader himself had voiced his opposition when he had showed up in their living room and had been told that they would be watching a movie and not playing games. His complaints had been along the lines of not wanting to waste his time with "stupid human videos", but, when Gaz had asked him if he was calling _her_ movie stupid, he had instantly shut his mouth.

So, less than half an hour after the alien's arrival, they were all sat in front of the screen, almost ten minutes into the movie, snacks spread all over them. The girl had even stopped by the store to grab something disgustingly sugary that the Irken could have eaten without too many troubles and that showed how much thought she had put in the evening. Which, for her two forced companions, was one more reason why they should have really tried not to ruin it.

If he had to be honest, Dib was a bit worried about all the care that his sister had put in the movie night. He wasn't familiar with the movie she had chosen and the title hadn't told him much. _The Mist._ It could have been anything, from a thriller to a historical movie to a horror one. He deeply hoped it wouldn't have turned out to be the latter kind. It wasn't that he didn't like the genre. On the contrary, he enjoyed those movies, when they weren't just boring splatters, especially if they were about monsters and aliens and anything along those lines. However, the problem was that he tended to get a lot on the edge the first time he watched one, to the point that he actually _jumped_ at every jump scare and at times he had even let out a few humiliating noises. Gaz _knew_ it, and very well. So, if her real intentions had been to embarrass him, a horror movie would have been the perfect choice. Especially considering that his nemesis was sat next to him, munching on what looked like heavily glazed cookies.

Said alien, on his part, had decided that he would have just gone through whatever Gaz had planned and dealt with each issue when it would have presented itself to him. It was another night that Professor Membrane would have spent away from the house, so Zim had taken off his disguise in the same moment when the door had been shut behind his back. Despite his dislike for having been misled, a fact that these days he hated more than he would normally have, and despite his initial protests, he had ended up settling down in his spot, without putting up too much of a fight, and had accepted the food that had been bought for him. At first, his disapproval had been reflected at full force on his expression, but, after the movie had started, the hostility in his stance had melted into a mild curiosity. The fact that he had concluded that the snacks were eatable, after having sniffed them warily, had made him more compliant to the situation.

The Invader had tried to persuade the girl to tell him what they would be watching, but she had just ordered him to "shut his alien trap and watch the movie", sounding like she was about to punch him. At that point, he had deemed wiser to, since he had had no other real choice.

He had made an attempt to turn his interrogative glance on his nemesis, but the older teen had shrugged, as to say that he didn't possess more information than he did. It had been then that the Irken had noticed the tension in Dib's shoulders, even though the latter had been trying to play it off. Whatever had been troubling his rival during the Skool day was obviously still on mind. The human was just doing a much better job at hiding it now. The Invader had briefly wondered what could be making the other act so weirdly, but he had decided that he didn't care. Or, at least, that he would have acted as if he didn't. As long as the worm child stayed out of his way, he wouldn't have wasted his time with the teen's mood. Or, at least, he would have tried not to.

The movie turned out to be a horror, just as Dib had feared, complete with monsters from another dimension, gore, plenty of suspense and a few jump scares. He didn't miss any of the small smirks that touched his sister's lips every time he tensed or got startled as the plot proceeded, fact that annoyed him to no end, but, luckily for him, Zim seemed to be too focused on the movie to notice his reactions. The alien switched from laughing at the "foolish group of filthy humans", whom he had deemed doomed since the very start, to letting out displeased, appalled and, perhaps, slightly scared screeches every time one of the monsters made an appearance. He even emitted a clicking, disgusted noise when the alien spiders came out of one of the characters' body, the sound matching the sickened expression on the older teen's own face. For the rest, though, whenever one of the humans got killed, or wounded, or infected, what left the Irken's lips was either an evil snicker or an almost hearty laugh.

Strangely enough, Gaz hardly glared at the Invader to shut him up, at least not until his sounds lasted less than ten seconds. There was just one time when the girl had to use one of her scary murderous looks and it was around half way through the movie. Zim had been completely caught off guard by the umpteenth attack of the monsters and had ended up instinctively clinging on Dib's arm, as he had done with GIR while they had been watching _Alien,_ weeks before. The teen had let out a pained yelp, feeling the Irken's claws sinking into his flesh and had tried to push him away, hissing out a curse, but the only result he had got was for those sharp fingers to dig even deeper in his forearm.

"Let go, space scum!" He had exclaimed, reaching out for the Irken's thin wrist and turning to shoot his nemesis a dirty look. "You're _stabbing_ me with your stupid claws! The monsters are _fake_. It's not like those things will come out of the screen and eat you!"

Zim's head had whipped around to face him, eyes narrowed in displeasure. "Zim knows this! And if you're trying to imply that I am scared, know that you are wrong, Dib-stink!" He had stated, voice almost vicious, but he had taken his hand away from the human's arm. "I am Zim and I am afraid of _nothing_! You instead…You keep jumping. Zim _felt_ you doing it."

The teen had rolled his eyes, scoffing. "I'm not scared either. Those scenes are made specifically to make you start. And I'm not the one who's been _squealing_ every time a monster comes into view," he had shot back, amber eyes locking in the alien's magenta orbs, a defiant glint in them. "So, space boy, you really don't fool anyone."

The Invader had leant forward, picking up the provocation. "Zim doesn't like those monsters, but it doesn't mean that I am _scared_ of them, worm child," he had growled back, baring his teeth. "I told you once already. I have faced much scarier beasts of doom during my missions and training. Yet here I am, ready to rule over your pathetic planet!"

Dib had opened his mouth to talk back and taunt his rival, ready to ask if he had really fought those "beasts of doom" or if he had just run for his life, but two things had got the words stuck in his throat. The first had been realising that his and Zim's faces were just a few inches away. Even if the alien had been scowling deeply and looking anything but pleased, the scythe-haired boy hadn't been able to ignore the heat that had rushed through him at the thought of how _easy_ it would have been to just close that small gap that still separated them and taste the Irken's mouth again. The mental image had caused him to almost choke on his breath, but he had managed to hide the wave of embarrassed dread that had made him grimace by masking it as his reaction to the second thing that had prevented him from replying. Namely the low, threatening growl of warning that Gaz had let out to tell them to shut up.

They had both turned towards her and had found the girl glaring daggers at them, looking scarier than the monsters on the screen. Slowly, as if in front of a rabid animal, they had moved back in their spots, without speaking another word. Zim had looked smug, because, despite having been forced to give the fight up, he had still managed to have the last word. The older teen, instead, had been content with feeling relieved because his sister had inadvertently come to his rescue, perhaps preventing him from doing something very, _very_ stupid.

That had been the only relevant incident that had happened and the rest of the movie had passed smoothly. However, Dib had found the booming laugh that the Invader had let out after the ending incredibly _creepy_. The alien had been quiet for a moment once the last scene had been over, as if it had taken him that brief lapse of time to understand what had happened. Then he had thrown his head backwards, with a hint of the purest, most sadistic delight the teen had ever witnessed, shouting a half disgusted, half thrilled "Foolish human!", before bursting out into a fit of laughter that was as disquieting as satisfied.

Dib had simply stared, incredulous and a bit appalled too. The display in itself wasn't surprising, since it was hardly the evilest thing Zim had done or said before his eyes, but he hadn't been able to prevent himself from thinking that _this_ was the being he currently had a major _crush_ on. Someone who found another's utter desperation _delightful_ , who wouldn't have hesitated to cause ruin just because he was in the mood for it, or for his own personal amusement. This was the being who wanted to _rule_ his planet, the one he was considering working with. He had to have lost his mind, completely, somewhere during the last four years. There was no other logical explanation for the situation he currently found himself in.

"Damn," he muttered under his breath, leaning heavily against the couch and watching as his nemesis persisted in his annoyingly creepy laugh. He was in so much trouble.

"Well, glad to see that you've enjoyed the movie," he claimed then, in a louder, sarcastic voice, addressing the Irken in the hope that it would have made him stop cackling. The sound was already getting on his nerves. "Even if I don't see what's so funny in someone who has just lost everything he had." It was a low blow, he knew it, but he was feeling too angered by the other's behaviour to care. "Doesn't that sound _familiar_ to you, uh?"

Zim instantly tensed at the last sentence, going completely rigid, and his laughter died out abruptly. His eyes narrowed and his amused smirk turned into an infuriated scowl. That was exactly what he had been fearing the day before, when he had been pondering whether or not to reveal the complete truth to his nemesis, before the Computer did it in his place. He had expected the other to use the weaknesses he admitted against him and that was what the teen was doing now, even if it was just a stupid discussion about an even more stupid movie. Not to mention that the worm child had dared to compare him to a pathetic human.

He clenched his fists. Dib had to know how much he had managed to hurt him with his words. He could tell by the hint of childish, cruel satisfaction that had passed in those amber eyes. Zim wanted to scream, to attack him, to reach out and tear him open, just as he had done with his own lab, but he forced himself to hold those instincts back. He refused to give Dib that satisfaction and show how deeply humiliated he had felt. He would have got his payback, of course, but _later_ , when he would have had the right means and enough time to fully enjoy it. For now, he would have just tried to pretend that he hadn't been touched as much as he had. For once, he felt entitled to deny the obvious.

"I still believe that human movies are awful and horrible, but this one wasn't _that_ bad," he claimed solemnly, leaning with an elbow on the armrest and trying, without much success, to appear casual. He deliberately chose to answer to the teen's every statement aside from the one that had disturbed him. Not without an effort, he managed to change his outraged expression back into an ugly, wide smirk. Two could play that game.

"And I think that you know exactly what Zim found so amusing, Dib-worm," he continued, in a mocking tone. "That foolish pig, killing all his little friends and then discovering that it wasn't necessary. _Inferior_ creature. If he had been Irken, he would have _purposely_ tricked them into getting killed, so that he could have got away with his life and been _happy_ when the army saved him from the monsters. Instead, he broke down like a _faulty_ toy." His expression turned sickened, and he ignored the pang in his chest as he spelled the last two words. He refused to acknowledge any other comparison between himself and the protagonist of the movie. "That's what your stupid human attachment thingie does. Gets you killed and spoils everything, even victory."

The words hit Dib like one of Gaz's punches, instantly killing the hint of sick amusement he had felt while purposefully hitting the alien's sorest spot. He should have expected that his rival would have struck back, because Zim always did, but he hadn't been prepared for the Invader to unconsciously pour even more salt on the same open wound. If his considerations of the previous night had left him any doubt about how much _not_ interested his nemesis would have been in a possible sentimental association, what the Irken had just stated deleted his almost non-existent uncertainties on the matter. He clenched his fists slightly and suddenly the disappointment he was feeling disappeared, leaving behind only angry bitterness.

"Oh, really? And if that's what you really think, then what are you doing here? With us?" He taunted, his tone getting harsher. He could feel his sister's eyes on him, but he refused to acknowledge her gaze. He was aware that he was acting like an idiot and quite weirdly too. He was getting mad over something that shouldn't have mattered. She would have been asking questions, later, if she hadn't already figured out what was going on. After all, Gaz might have been almost completely disinterested in most of what happened around her, but she wasn't blind. And she wasn't stupid either. However, he would have dealt with her later, if the issue had come up. Now, he wanted to stay focused on Zim. The alien was probably slightly confused by his sudden animosity too and he didn't want to risk slipping out more than he could afford.

"Why do you eat lunch with us at Skool? Why do you spend breaks playing games with Gaz? Why did you invite me over for movies and snacks after having kicked my ass? More than once even. And, above all, why did you ask me…that thing, yesterday?" He resumed his attack, turning to fully face the Irken, a deep, hostile frown in his face. "Uh? Why is that, space scum?"

If the alien didn't care for bonds at all, why had he asked him to work with him, to share his precious conquest? Was it another elaborated trick to make him surrender, to push him not to stand in his way? Was the Invader trying to mislead him again, making the best out of his awful, humiliating situation? He had thought that the other had been sincere, that he had wanted them to work together. Now, however, he was starting to think that he should have looked harder for a ruse, behind the demanding request. Had he been too naïve believing that Zim wanted to form new, real connections now that he knew that his entire race had rejected him?

A thick silence followed the end of his sudden outburst, filling the living room with renewed tension. Even Gaz, who had pulled out her console and had started to play while they discussed, had been caught off guard and had looked up again, locking her eyes on her brother, a hint of curiosity in her frown. She hadn't expected such a strong comeback. They were both used to the Irken's antics and harsh comments, so she didn't see why her sibling should have reacted so strongly. She hated it, but she was starting to truly want to know what had happened the day before. Dib had his mood swings, from time to time, and she had seen him pissed with Zim in far too many occasions for her liking, but this time something was different. The boy wasn't just angry. There was a deeper, darker emotion in his voice, and a worrisome stiffness in his stance. He was verbally assaulting the Invader, but at the same time he was clearly on the defensive. There was something unsaid lingering in the air and she was annoyed for not being able to read between the messy lines of the fight.

From his part, Zim, after having been taken aback by the violent explosion his words had elicited, had bared his zipped teeth slightly, antennae pressing against his skull, obviously displeased with the accusations. His body had tensed once again and he had looked like he was about to bolt, but it was hard to say if he would have just left the house or attacked his nemesis. He knew far too well what the human's words could imply, even if his rival in that moment seemed more inclined to believe that his association with him and the girl was just for show. Something he did out of convenience. And it was true, in a sense, so he could have easily let the worm child believe it.

However, on the other hand, such a reply could have had heavy consequences. He was, even if still unofficially, stranded on a hostile alien planet, without any real resource. If his Tallest had decided to cut off all his contacts within the territories of the Empire, he would have been left to fence for himself and he would have been lost, without access to his technology, without Irken food, without intel. It would have been just him, his faulty PAK, GIR and his sarcastic Computer. And the random contacts with Skoodge, assuming that he would have managed to keep them. After all, the other Invader, while perhaps lacking the viciousness that characterised most of their kind, was still a loyal servant of the Empire. He wouldn't have disobeyed a direct order from the Tallest for the sake of a _Defective_. Was he really ready to burn all the bridges he had left? To destroy the only chance he might have to get allies, gaining more enemies instead? To put at risk his brand-new mission? For the sake of the same pride that had made him blind for so long?

Till two months before, even after having learnt the truth about his fate, he would have clung to what was left of his crumbled, exaggerated self-confidence, even if it had meant meeting his end. Before the revelation, he would have made that choice because he wouldn't have been able to see the fate that awaited ahead of him, blinded as he had used to be by his delusions of grandeur. In the days immediately after the discovery, instead, he simply wouldn't have cared enough about said destiny, since he had been dragging himself around without a clear idea of what to do with his being, tempted as he had been to just let himself fade away into nothingness and oblivion. In that period, the only thing that had been keeping him from slipping under the surface had been his artificially encoded survival instincts.

However, in the following weeks, things had evolved. His work with Ms Xander, his own plans and rebuilt routine, the new harmony between him and his artificial sidekicks, his association with the Membrane siblings, the same he was pondering to deny, and, last but not least, his new self-assigned mission, which had been the culmination of the whole process. All those changes had reshaped his existence, whether he wanted to admit it or not, and now he not only had something to lose, but he was also painfully aware of the fact and of the precarious balance of his situation. A single push in the wrong direction and everything could have been turned into ashes, annihilated by that same destruction that was an essential, indelible part of whom he was.

Zim crossed his arms on his chest, making up his mind. The anger still lingered in his eyes, but his posture was more defensive than belligerent now. The inconvenient truth was that the answer to all his questions was that no, he couldn't afford such a risk, not when he was so close to start over and trace by himself the path that would have taken him to reach his aims and crown ambitions.

"This is still your filthy planet, Earth monkey, at least until I conquer it," he stated, matter-of-factly, even if his tone was low, bordering threatening. "Zim has to… _conform_ to its ugly, confusing and demented costumes, if I want to fit in." He wasn't going to admit anything, to confess that his staying on that ball of dirt had changed his views on so many things, that he had found there, of all places, the recognition he had always craved for, even if not in the form he would have expected. However, he wasn't going to deny it either. He hesitated for a split second, but then he forced himself to hold the teen's eyes, resisting the urge to look away. "And Zim _chose_ to fit in."

During the prolonged period of silence, Dib had kept ignoring his sister's gaze, but he hadn't been able to keep himself from swallowing nervously at the enraged expression that had at first appeared on his rival's face. However, he had pushed his nervousness away, keeping his amber eyes locked in the Irken's magenta orbs, with more determination than the one he actually felt. He had tried his best to stand his ground, even if the wait for an answer or a more explicit reaction had started to unsettle him too. Challenging the Invader perhaps hadn't been the smartest idea, but the words were out of his mouth, so he couldn't have taken them back even if he had wanted to. Moreover, a part of him was curious to see how the alien would have worked around his inquires. Assuming that the other would have offered a proper reply instead of just sidestepping the questions and moving on to insulting him.

When Zim had finally broken the quiet stasis and had spoken, the human had taken a moment to catch up with what the Irken was saying, because at first his mind had been too confused by the lack of insults. His frown had deepened when his brain had registered the actual words, instinctively expecting to find another trick in them, or maybe the umpteenth confirmation of his thoughts, but instead the suspicious, hostile expression he had been sporting had slowly faded away as the implications of the last sentence started to sink in. _Oh._

His eyes instantly dropped and he felt like an idiot once again, but for a very different reason. The Invader most likely meant his words about emotional attachments. He thought of them as unnecessary and detrimental because that was probably how his race had come to see them. However, that didn't mean that, under peculiar circumstances, those rules and beliefs couldn't be contradicted.

In the past years, Zim had chosen to do a lot of things, despite showing contempt for them. He had even saved the same planet he had been hellbent on destroying. Moreover, Dib himself had been making far too many assumptions, but, at the end of the day, he kept forgetting that he knew nothing for sure about Irkens, aside from the obvious. And at times even that wasn't so self-evident as it might have seemed. The fact that the aliens' culture had chosen to exclude every type of interpersonal relationship that was outside their strict, height-based hierarchy didn't mean that they were absolutely incapable of creating bonds of any sort. And now his nemesis's words, even if very subtly and very vaguely, seemed to imply that he had chosen to forge one, in his own, alien way, with him and Gaz, a bond that went beyond hate and convenience. Mutual benefit, alliance, companionship, friendship, it was hard to say what human label could be fitting enough to describe it. Perhaps none. Still, there was something there, even if the Irken refused to admit it out aloud. Facts always spoke louder than words.

The older teen's shoulders slumped a bit. He should have had those thoughts _before_ putting up his pathetic show. Instead, he had overreacted. If the agitation that had possessed him in the morning, since the first moment when he had landed his eyes on the alien, hadn't been enough of a clue, now he knew for certain that he had been too optimistic in thinking that he would have quickly fixed and overcome the issue of his freshly discovered feelings. He had deluded himself into thinking that he could have avoided an actual freak out. The truth was that he had been suffering through one the whole time, without realising. Or that he had, more or less consciously, been ignoring it, which was even worse. And, just to make his situation more helpless, he was once again at loss of words, with Zim's intense orbs locked on him.

"Moronic drama queens. Both of you. You two truly deserve each other."

Gaz's cutting remark broke the new, less tense but more awkward silence that had replaced the previous one, sparing the older teen from having to find something to say. The girl's focus was back on the screen of her game and the surprise and curiosity she had showed had been fully replaced by her usual, ever-present annoyed attitude. Her certainty that the problem between the other two had to be something _idiotic_ had been strengthened by the irritating show she had just been forced to endure and now she was completely done with them.

She waved a hand in a shooing motion. "Now that we have established that, go sort out your shit and be together somewhere else," she went on. "Somewhere far away from me."

Dib blinked, turning to look at his sister, still confused by the sudden interjection that had interrupted his thoughts and his session of mental scolding. However, before he could react, Zim jumped on his feet, an appalled expression on his face, and pointed a claw towards him, looking both incredulous and scandalised.

"You told her about that evil spices of doom!" He accused, all his previous reflections and uneasiness instantly forgotten and replaced by his current angry incredulity. "Filthy human! What does your big head tell you?! _Betrayal_! We had a deal, worm child!"

"What?" The scythe-haired boy let out, completely at loss, but then his mind quickly caught up with the other's words and he realised what the Irken meant. His eyes widened and he shook his head immediately, lifting his hands. How could the moron even just suspect that he had told his _sister_ all about them _making out_? It was absurd. He would have never done such a thing. "Hey, hey! _No_! I didn't do anything of the sort. Why should have I done something so stupid? I didn't break any deal! I said nothing! I swear!"

"Then why did she use that expression? I know what it means! I learnt it from your foolish TV shows!" The Invader shot back, loudly, clearly not believing him. How dared the human trying to deny the obvious? Did his nemesis thought that he was _that_ clueless? "Don't try to fool the Might Zim! Not to mention that what she said is a filthy _lie_! I deserve much better than some _thing_ like _you_ , Dib-thing!"

Dib felt the almost incontrollable urge to bang his head against the wall. Or, even better, to give the alien's green skull said treatment. It was so…Zim-like to misinterpret the most common human ways of saying, even after all that time. "Gee, space boy, calm down. It's just an expression. Something people say to get on your nerves," he tried to explain, lifting his eyes to the ceiling. "And you completely fell for it. Congrats."

The Irken squinted at him, one eye wide open and the other narrowed, fists on his hips. He was still reluctant to believe his nemesis's words, mostly because, if they were true, it would have meant not only that he had made a fool of himself, but also that he had risked revealing what he had erroneously thought that the human had blabbed out. Now he had to get himself out of the bad impression he had made. Assuming that it was possible.

"Zim fell for nothing! I was…was…ugh, it was a test! _YES_! I was testing your loyalty, Dib-pig!" He claimed, stumbling on his words in a way that made even more obvious that he was at fault. He let out a very forced, short laugh. "But of course you haven't been able to realise such an evident fact! That gargantuan head of yours is filled…"

He couldn't finish whatever he had started say about his nemesis's skull because in that moment a piercing beeping sound came from behind his back, interrupting him mid-sentence. His expression turned annoyed as his communicator emerged from his PAK, but deep down he was glad for the interruption. It was the perfect excuse to cut that already lost verbal battle short without having to admit defeat.

"This isn't over, Dib-beast," he stated in a defiant tone, before grabbing the device and barking inside it: "Who dares to disturb ZIM?!"

The teen shot the alien a completely unimpressed look, deciding that a reply wasn't worth the breath and the voice he would have been forced to use to give it. Even after all that time, he was still appalled by how stubbornly his rival tried to grasp at straws every time he put himself in a corner. Apparently, the fact that, by doing so, he constantly ended up digging his own grave hadn't taught him to try a more effective tactic.

" _Master, you have an incoming transmission,_ " the Computer's voice came from the device, sounding as unaffected as the human was by having been yelled at. " _It would be best if you came back to the base. It's Tallest Purple, sir._ "

Zim instantly lost all his smugness and tensed up for the umpteenth time, looking unsettled for a moment, but the uncomfortable expression was forced away from his face as quickly as it had appeared. "You _did_ send the report I finished earlier, didn't you?" He asked, his tone sounding almost threatening. He wouldn't have condoned a negative answer. He had put aside his work on his machine to be able to fill in that stupid and embarrassing file before he showed up at the Membrane residence. " _Didn't you?_ "

" _I did, sir. As you ordered. However, I'm afraid that the report itself is the problem,_ " the machine answered, almost candidly, and the Invader instantly had the feeling that it had done something. Something _bad_. Behind his back.

A hissed clicking sound left his lips, one that Dib, from where he was sitting quietly, decided to interpret as the umpteenth Irken curse. "I'm coming. Tell Purple to wait for me. I don't want to take that transmission _here_ of all places," he stated and closed the call without waiting for an answer. His communicator slipped back inside his PAK as he retrieved his disguise.

"Troubles?" The teen dared to ask, watching as the alien struggled to slip his wig on without touching his antennae. It was mostly a rhetorical question, since his rival's expression seemed to be screaming frustration and a bit of dread too. Besides, these days, the other was never happy whenever the Tallest were involved.

"Zim can fence for himself, Dib-human," was the only, curt answer the Invader addressed him as he started to march towards the door. A moment later he had opened it and left in a hurry, without sparing a single word or gesture to say goodbye.

Dib rolled his eyes but didn't try to follow this time. It was better that way. Things had been awkward enough that night, even if right before the call they had stepped back into a more familiar territory. It was a day to forget. Not only he hadn't done any progress with the thinking he had sworn himself he would have done, but he had found out that his previous session of deep pondering had turned out to be nowhere near as efficient and definitive as he had hoped.

"See you tomorrow too, space scum," he muttered under his breath, sounding half exasperated and half annoyed. However, he instantly regretted it because Gaz shot him a heated glare.

He cleared his throat and reached out for the remote. Better keeping himself busy before he gave into the impulse to start rambling as per usual. His sister would have turned him into a pile of smoking ashes if he had tried to bother her again, after how that day had gone. That was perhaps the only thing on which he had no doubts.

* * *

Hey, everyone!

I'm not dead ^^" I want to apologise for keeping you waiting so long, but things got a bit crazy around here. However, I have a lil bit more free time this month, even if I still have exams, so the next chapter should be up in two weeks. And I'll make sure to keep my word this time!

So, this chapter is a bit...transitional. I decided to take my time exploring and resolving Zim's and Dib's situation, so bear with me. They have such a complex relationship, plus all the factors I built up during the plot of this story, and I don't want to rush thing or make them (too) OOC. If you have any criticism/suggestions in this sense, or towards anything else, please, feel free to let me know! I always love hearing about what you guys think and what are your prediction for the next parts!

I'll leave you with a bit of a spoiler about the next chapter: it won't be about the boys or set on Earth! And that's all I'm saying! xD

Thanks a lot to you all for dealing with my odd posting tables and also with my crazy ideas! This story got a lil bit "popular" and that's honestly something I hadn't been expecting when I started to post! Your interest means the world to me!

My special gratitude goes, of course, to all the people who stop by and find the time to leave me a comment! It's really heart-warming! Also, I know that i haven't replied to comments, and I'm VERY sorry about that. I had a very crazy month. I'll try not to fail in that regard in the future!

Also, I want to give a special shotout to this wonderful person and artist: **timmicita**. You guys need to check out his art because it's _amazing_.

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	30. Chapter 30

_On the Massive…_

Purple hit a button on the main console, effectively cutting off that endlessly irritating transmission, which had lasted far too long for his liking. His antennae were still twitching in annoyance, despite the small consolation prize that the end of the conversation had brought him. There was a part of him that was still incredulous at the fact that Zim had tried to _bribe_ him, but after all the request had given him the opportunity to pull yet another fast one on the Defective. Of course he could have easily ordered the shorter Irken to send him the daily dose of snacks, of _any_ kind, that the Invader had promised him in exchange for receiving a reactor in the very foreseeable future, without granting him the favour. However, how to resist the chance to get rid of some malfunctioning trashy piece of technology knowing that its receiver would have gone through hell because of it? It would have been fun seeing Zim struggling with a bad radiation leak. Or something even nastier. It was the _least_ the shorter Irken deserved for all the troubles he had been causing him.

The Tallest crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at the dark screen for one moment longer. He should really stop thinking about the Defective and hurry up to go back to the Control Room. He had been away for quite some time and he was ready to bet that Red was wondering where he had gone and, especially, what he was doing.

He muttered a quiet curse under his breath. Among the other things, the Invader had kept him waiting for over ten minutes before accepting his transmission. If he didn't want his co-ruler to find out about his more or less secret communications with Zim, he couldn't keep disappearing for so long every time he had to make one of those calls. Sooner or later, Red would have started to question him about what he did when he locked himself up in his private recharging chamber. Coming up with a believable explanation could have turned out to be a real challenge, considering that the other Tallest usually could easily tell when he was lying. It was the result of so many rotations of close cohabitation.

The door opened with a quiet hiss after he had keyed in the access code and he quickly moved past the threshold. The delayed answer, unfortunately, hadn't been the most irritating part of the whole ordeal. He had been angry at Zim even before the other showed up on his screen. The "report" the shorter Irken had sent him, assuming that one could have called the _thing_ with such denomination, had been filled with unnecessary details about the most common human mating rituals and Purple was almost completely sure that the Invader had done it on purpose.

He gritted his teeth in a fit of renewed irritation as his mind briefly touched how Zim had tried to logically defend himself. On one side, speculating that a higher dose of the drug could have pushed in such direction was a reasonable deduction, as the Invader had smoothly pointed out, so the choice to add those pieces of information was _somehow_ justified. However, on the other hand, the smug grin that the shorter Irken had tried and failed to hide, while he had been scolding him about that very same fact, had Purple him that _not_ needed amount of hideous data hadn't been added just for the sake of being thorough. Zim had wanted to make him feel pure _horror_ , perhaps as a payback for the cruel humiliating task he had assigned to him. And, as much as he hated to admit it, the little pest had fully succeeded that time.

The guards quickly moved to let him pass, as he exited his and Red's private lodgings, but he hardly acknowledged the salute they addressed him, his mind still elsewhere. There was even more to that whole situation that should have been nothing but fun for him and a pin in the Defective's neck, but that had turned out to be much more complicated than that. He despised to admit it even more, even if it was undeniable, but, while he had indeed felt scandalised by most of it, the material the Invader had sent him had also inspired in him an appalling curiosity and an eerie sense of _fascination_ that was almost as strong as the general disgust he had experienced.

At first, his own reactions had left him just unsettled and confused on how to deal with the data he had acquired since, despite the weirdness, that appeal had seemed mostly harmless. However, after he had happened to space out, wondering how some of those exchanges could _feel_ , right in the middle of a conversation with Red and his mind had chosen to use the closest being to him as a test subject for some mental simulations, he had realised that his curious fascination wasn't innocuous at all. Not to mention that those extremely _alarming_ thoughts involving his co-ruler had got stuck in his skull and nothing of what he had tried to do to chase them away had worked. At that point, he had decided that it was all utterly disturbing and that he didn't want to know anything else about it. The _video_ he had received together with the written report had already offered him more visual evidence than he would have ever needed.

He rolled his eyes slight at the memory of how the shorter Irken had denied any knowledge of the latter thing. Purple had actually been inclined to believe him, because he was sure that Zim would have never willing humiliated himself to that point, and in fact it had turned out that it had been his faulty SIR Unit to record it. And that the Invader's Computer had decided to attach it because it was "relevant and very _explicative_ ", as the machine itself had defined it. Witnessing the horrified and mortified shock in the Defective's expression, as he had stared at himself occupied in a disgusting, _fluid-y_ exchange with that weird human smeet, who was supposed to be his greatest opponent or something along those lines, had been the only other entertaining thing in the whole conversation.

Zim had eventually snapped out of it and had stumbled on his words, trying to justify himself, but Purple had cut him off, not wanting to waste even more time. Despite what he had decided on the subject, his previous experience with the drug had left him plenty of unanswered questions, to which the shorter Irken's account hadn't answered, and that had been the real reason why he had called the Defective again so soon after their last transmission. It was incredible how irritatingly _inefficient_ Zim could be, even when he was being thorough with his paperwork. None of the unwanted details he had been forced to read, in fact, had given him the replies he had been seeking. In the first place why Zim had chosen that particular human subject instead of just grabbing a random one and killing them off after the end of the experiment.

In the aftermath, Purple had admitted to himself that he could have figured out at least part of the answer on his own. Had he been in the shorter Irken's place, and _luckily_ he wasn't, he wouldn't have picked a random alien either. The wave of disgust that the idea had caused him to feel had been stronger than the cruel spite that had almost made him want to order Zim to repeat the test with someone else. His sadism had limits, even when it came to the Defective.

What had caught him off guard had been what the Invader had said next, after having struggled with his words a bit more. Zim had called the human his "nemesis". The Tallest had blinked in confusion for a moment, thinking that he had heard it wrong, but the word, spoken with right intonation and clicks, was unmistakable, even if it wasn't something that you heard every day on Irk. Not in the current era, at least. If he had to be honest, he wasn't sure of what sort of reply he had been expecting, but that was the last thing he would have thought of hearing. On the other hand, though, it also made _painfully_ sense, and so did all the implications that had started to pop in his mind as a consequence.

Luckily, he hadn't been given much time to reflect on them, because Zim had offered him a quite worrisome tale on how he had come in possession of those old, outdated information by hacking into the Tallest's forbidden archives back when they were still Irken Elites. Not that he had been surprised. It was something that he would have expected the other to do. The shorter Irken had always had a very peculiar idea of what "respecting the rules" meant. What had concerned him was that the Defective's real aim had been the designs of the Empire's newest chemical weapon of the time. Apparently, back then, he had thought that he could have impressed his instructors and gained a better reputation by using it against his fellow recruits.

Purple had felt a small hint of dread spreading in his spooch at the idea of what could have happened if Zim had succeeded in putting his plans into action. Good thing for everyone that, instead, he had run into an encrypted section about how the Irken society used to function before the Control Brains took over and rewrote laws and social conventions to make them more fitting for the race of invaders they had become. A bunch of meaningless traditions were surely more harmless than a weapon of mass destruction, even if you could never know when it came to Zim. Whenever he and Red had been ready to believe that the Invader couldn't get any worse, the latter had promptly proved them wrong. Not to mention that the Defective's brain and PAK were already enough messed up on their own, without needing for those ancient customs to mingle with his faulty way of thinking.

The last thought made him frown deeply again. There was another detail that had disturbed him about the transmission. Namely Zim's attitude. The feeling that something was off with it had got stronger and stronger as the call had progressed, but he hadn't been able to wrap his mind around what it could be. Something hadn't fitted, had been out of balance. The way in which the shorter Irken stood, his tenser stance. The darker look lingering in his magenta orbs. The almost _spitefully_ _defiant_ note his voice had taken from time to time.

Purple shook his head, as he finally crossed the threshold of the Control Room. It had been a vague, unfocused feeling, but it had unsettled him and he hadn't liked it. Still, it was also true that he had never allowed the other to get under his skin, not for real, and he wasn't going to start now, when they would have soon been rid of him, so he hadn't commented on it. Not even after the Invader had mentioned that he had been aware all along of the rumours that he himself had spread about the Defective back when they had been training together as Irken Elites. The fact that the shorter Irken had never said a word on the matter had initially made him suspicious, but he had let the issue go after Zim had claimed that he hadn't because he hadn't given credit to those voices and because, in any case, Purple had been already taller than him at the time. No one would have listened to the future Invader's complaints, that considered.

"Where have you been? You've been gone forever!" Red greeted him, as soon as he had reached his seat. "Let me guess. You hid and ate my ration of snacks behind my back. _Again_."

At first, he hadn't thought much of it when his co-ruler had excused himself with an idiotic, clearly fake pretext and had left him alone. However, the more time had passed, the more he had found himself musing over the fact that it was already the third time that it had happened in a short period of time. Despite the kind of accuse he had thrown out, he had the feeling that there was something going on, something that had nothing to do with Purple's usual shenanigans.

Red raised an expecting brow in the other Irken's direction, taking a moment to study him attentively. His companion had been acting weirdly since after the incident with the drugged donuts. Not only the other Tallest had insisted that it wouldn't have been worth it to call the Defective and take revenge for the prank that Zim had more or less willingly played on them, but he had kept constantly zoning out. No matter what they were doing. Talking, reviewing reports, giving orders. It was as if Purple's mind was too occupied with something else to stay focused on the present. He had even got distracted during an Organic Sweep, one time. Now _that_ had been worrisome. There was nothing his co-ruler loved more than watching things and planets and people being blown up, aside from his snacks perhaps. If whatever was going on in his companion's head managed to divert his attention from his favourite pastimes, then Red had all the reasons to be worried.

"Oh, come on, that happened just a few times!" Purple protested with a scoff, but he made sure to carefully avoid his co-ruler's inquisitive ruby orbs. He could tell that the other was starting to become suspicious, but thankfully Red still hadn't found the guts to question him directly on the matter, also because it would have meant mentioning what had happened with those donuts. None of them really wanted to bring _that_ up.

The memories of the accident, as per usual, gifted him a bunch of unwanted and contrasting feelings, which didn't help his already growing aggravation with the current state of things. Irritation, disgust, uneasiness, humiliation, but also weird allure, cautious curiosity and a hint of that lingering, tingly warmth that had overwhelmed him while the drug had been in his system. He mentally cursed Zim and himself too, for having let the Defective convince him to try the cursed sweets. He would have gladly done without those confusing and inconvenient emotions. He had an Empire to rule and an invasion to guide. Moreover, he would have preferred using his free time for more pleasant activities rather than being driven mad because of something the little pest had done.

"Did you or didn't you?" Red's accusing voice interrupted the trail of his thoughts once again. The other leader hadn't missed how Purple had started to space out for the umpteenth time and, while he still didn't want to address the issue directly, he also didn't wish to waste time to repeat himself. There were important matters they had to discuss and he would have needed his co-ruler's full attention for that conversation.

Purple rolled his eyes, finally turning to shoot Red a look. "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. You'll have to find out by yourself," he talked back with the hint of a smirk. If the other chose to make his own assumptions on what he had been doing, he would have let him. There was no way that his companion could have guessed what had really kept him occupied and whatever other hypothesis was better than the truth.

Red opened his mouth to offer a harsh, sarcastic remark, but then he changed his mind and punched his co-ruler's shoulder instead, hard enough to make him wince. If he had responded to the provocation, they might have gone on bickering for who knows how long and, as appealing as the idea was, that wasn't the right moment for it. Normally, he wouldn't have hesitated to discard anything work-related and would have jumped on the chance of mocking Purple, but that particular issue was pressing enough to demand that he acted a bit more responsibly than they usually did.

"While you were away, avoiding your duties, I got a few reports," he started, ignoring the heated glare he was addressed. He lifted a hand and waved his claws, causing one of the navigators to come scurrying to him, carrying a tablet. He then waited for the smaller Irken to be out of earshot before continuing. "Most of them were the usual boring stuff, but one caught my attention…" His fingers worked quickly over the display, seeking the document he was talking about, and, once he had found it, he handed the device to his co-ruler. "Read it."

"I don't see where's the problem in me taking some time off work while you're around to do it," Purple shot back, in a smug tone, taking a hold of the tablet. The words slipped out of his lips easily, guided by habit and repetition. It was one of their oldest arguments. The first time his co-ruler had called him out on how he had been bluntly avoiding the more bureaucratic parts of their duties had been the day after they had been proclaimed Tallest. "And you said that most of this stuff is just boring and useless, so…Why should I care?"

His eyes then fell on the screen. The account was composed of several pages, all stuffed with Irken characters and complicated diagrams. His antennae dropped a bit at the prospect of having to go through all that.

"Can't you just tell me what this is about?" He asked, sounding almost hopeful, even if he knew that he would have got a negative answer. The glare that his companion had shot him even before he could finish his sentence had been enough of an answer.

Red didn't even try to hide the fresh wave of annoyance that the question brought him. "At times I wonder what the advantage of us both being Tallest is, if I have to do all the work," he mumbled under his breath, voice colouring with the same irritation that was sparkling in his eyes. Normally he would have just rolled his eyes and maybe smashed the tablet in his co-ruler's face, out of spite, before complying to his request, but this might have turned out to be an extremely crucial matter and he needed the other to catch up on that. "Purple, shut up and read it."

The other Tallest let out a displeased clicking sound, to state his vexation, but he didn't dare to argue back this time. He had seen his companion mad plenty of times, far too often than he would have liked, if he had to be honest, but there was a hint of seriousness in Red's anger that usually never touched his ruby eyes. Whatever was in that report had to have truly concerned his companion and that wasn't something that happened easily either.

His purple orbs moved away from his co-ruler's figure and landed back on the display, this time to stay there. From the first lines, he easily deduced that it was an account coming from one of the planets near the borders of the Empire, in an area that was diametrically opposite to where the Massive currently was. It was one of the last territories the Irkens had occupied under Tallest Miyuki's rule, a few rotations before her tragic death. Operation Impending Doom I should have continued the expansion in that direction, but, after its premature ending, he and Red had chosen to direct the next wave of invasion towards another sector of that same galaxy. The official reason had been that they had found some interesting planets that the Empire _really_ needed to acquire, while the true motivation had been keeping the invasion front as far as possible from where Zim was supposed to be exiled. Of course, they hadn't expected the Defective to show up at Conventia and make that precaution useless.

Purple almost huffed out a scoff at the memory, but then he forced himself to go on reading. Lingering on the past wouldn't have done him any good and he didn't want to risk making Red even madder by getting distracted. So, he did his best and focused on the next section of the report, which was pretty much a bunch of information on the functions and the average level of productivity of the planet in question. Since everything looked in order, he decided to skip over the data. They didn't seem to be related to whatever was bothering his companion.

He ended up flicking through the first half of the document, soon starting to wish that the other had at least told him in what page the relevant information was reported. It would have saved them both a considerable amount of time. However, unfortunately for him, Red wasn't in a merciful mood that day and he also seemed determined to take it out on him. So all Purple was left to do was skimming the account till his gaze _finally_ met something that looked promising.

However, his satisfaction for having found what he had been looking for was incredibly short lived and his slightly smug expression fell as soon as he started to properly read the paragraph. The first detail that his eyes met was a number, the one of the victims involved in the nasty incident that had happened a few days before and that had to be the real reason why the report had been sent in. The preliminary analyses of the scene had determined that the explosion had been caused by a technical fault in one of the main reactors that powered up the sector, but the true nature of the problem was still unclear.

Purple's claws brushed the surface of the tablet lightly, moving the document up slowly, so that he could read every word. The accident in itself, as bad as it had been, wasn't shocking. The Empire was incredibly vast and, no matter how advanced the technology they used could be, the statistics deemed that something of the sort had to happen, from time to time. What was truly _disturbing_ were the dynamics of this peculiar disaster. Being it a factory planet, one would have expected most of the dead and the injured to be the alien slaves and workers of the facility, but, instead, most of beings in the list were _Irkens_. And, even worse, apparently they had been summoned in the area by the resident Control Brains just before the explosion had taken place. It seemed a bit too much… _planned_ to be just an unfortunate coincidence.

The Tallest swallowed slightly, lifting his eyes from the screen and moving them back on his co-ruler. His chest felt tight with something close to anxiety, of an ominous kind he hadn't experienced in a long time.

"Red…" He mumbled after a moment, finally understanding what was behind the other's weirdly serious attitude. "This…Was this a _sabotage_?"

Red averted his ruby orbs for a moment, the claws of his left hand tapping against the armrest of his chair a few times before he turned again and met his companion's eyes. "No," he answered with force, shaking his head to underline his words. Then his tone became less harsh, almost as if he had been trying to soothe the other leader's agitation, but also his own. "No one can _hack_ the Control Brains, Purple. Don't be ridiculous." He shook his head again, even if a shadow passed on his face as he spoke, betraying the fact that the doubt had haunted him too when he had firstly read the report. "It was probably just a…glitch."

The frown on Purple's face just deepened at those words, as he didn't feel reassured at all by the idea. Of course, it was better than thinking that someone might have got _that_ close to the Empire's very core and to what kept the whole Irken society standing, but his companion's hypothesis wasn't comforting either.

"Control Brains aren't supposed to _glitch,_ Red," he hissed back, his voice bearing a hint of annoyance not because he was actually irritated, but because he was trying hard to cover up how unsettled he was feeling. "First those morons of the Resisty suddenly find weapons and ships who knows where, and now _this_. What are we supposed to do?!"

"Calm down," Red answered, reaching out to wrap his fingers around his co-ruler's thin arm. "I know that the Control Brains aren't supposed to glitch, and that's why _no one_ can know about this. I…I've already contacted the soldier who filled that report in and made sure that he and the others who are on that planet will keep their mouths shut about the whole ordeal. Officially, it never happened. Not in the way it did, at least. I ordered them to shoot down a few of the slaves too, to even the victims count." His grip tightened slightly. "As for those short bugs, don't worry about them. They have never managed to do us much harm…Aside from that one time. But that was all Zim's fault so, it doesn't count." He rolled his eyes for a moment, before turning serious once again. "We'll manage to wipe them away soon enough. No matter how many weapons they get their hands on. They can build a fleet for all I'm concerned. They're _nothing_ compared to the might of the Empire. We just need to keep all this between us and everything will be fine."

The other Tallest nodded, even if he didn't manage to completely hide his reluctance. He wished he had his companion's same confidence about what was needed to be done about the matter. Or that, at least, he could have pretended to have it. He reached to rub the side of his head. And to think that, before crossing the threshold of the Control Room, his only worries had been Red finding out that he had been talking to the Defective and his own weird thoughts. Oh, and what kind of donuts he would have eaten that night. Now, instead, he would have been stuck with the thought of what might or not have happened on that insignificant planet too for a while.

"Alright. We'll do as you say," he grumbled under his breath, looking quite unhappy as he handed the tablet back. "But, if this gets out of hand, I'll blame it all on you. Know that."

Red shot him a mild glare and let go of him, but not before having given him a light push. "If I fall, you come down with me, and you know that. When has been the last time that something hasn't affected us _both_? And usually I'm the one being dragged down because of _your_ foolishness. It would be just fair if it was the other way around, for once."

"Hey, that's not true!" Purple protested, but deep down he was glad that the other had chosen to bring the conversation back to their usual banter. That felt more like solid ground than any other kind of specific reassurance he could have been offered. Moreover, the sight of his co-ruler's lips twitching upwards as the other tried to bite back a smug grin made a warmer feeling flood where agitation had been twirling in his chest. "Back to important matters. Any chance that you'll let me… _borrow_ some of your snacks again? All that reading took a good dose of brain power."

Red closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the headrest in a show of pure exasperation. "Purple, I swear. I have _no_ idea of why I still put up with you."

The other Tallest chuckled as a wide, extremely pleased and slightly disquieting smirk opened on his face. "Oh, Red. It's because you like me too much. It's time that you admit it," he claimed in a knowing tone and his sly smile just turned into a laugh at the punch that reached his shoulder as an answer. Red could hit him as much as he wanted. It wouldn't have changed that he was _right_.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

The mass that filled the geometrical labyrinth drawn by the corridors of the underground facility was thick, but it moved orderly enough to prevent almost all the accidental bumping. The Irkens walked by their own or in small groups, each of them heading back to their work stations or trying to make the best out of their very short breaks. Words made of clicks and hissed sounds echoed against the metal walls, producing a noise that might have rung unpleasant to an alien ear, but that was instead perfectly normal to all the presents. It was rare to hear another language spoken on Irk, especially considering that no foreigner was allowed on the planet, if not under very special, usually nasty circumstances. And they hadn't occurred in a long time.

Among the crowd a short, sturdy Irken was struggling to keep up with the quick pace of his taller companion, even if technically she was the one accompanying him and not vice versa. Unfortunately for Skoodge, Tenn hadn't taken his request too well, even if she had accepted to walk him to the spaceport. The reasons were mainly two. First of all, she, as everyone else, had a very short snacking time in-between daily shifts and apparently passing it in the mass wasn't how she had been planning to spend it. Secondly, and _especially_ , she strongly disliked the fact that he had chosen to leave even if he hadn't got the official authorisation to do it.

Skoodge bit back a sigh, turning slightly on one side to avoid bumping into a passing drone. He understood her point of view, but he didn't share it. It wasn't like he hadn't tried to contact the Tallest to inform them of his plans. He had, several times, but they had rejected each one of his transmissions. They had to be too busy with the final part of Operation Impending Doom II and he couldn't blame them for not having time for him. Wrapping up a wave of invasion couldn't be easy. So, in the end, he had decided that disturbing them just for a formality wasn't worth it. After all, he was supposedly on license. He should have been free to come and go as he pleased, without having to file in an official request and wait for clearance.

"This is a bad idea, Skoodge. I told you already, but maybe if I keep repeating myself you'll see reason and go back to your station," the female Irken claimed in that very moment, interrupting her companion's thoughts. "Why are you risking so much? This could spoil all you have achieved by conquering Blorch. Mistakes have very high costs these days."

Skoodge had to swallow another sigh at the hint of bitterness in her tone. She was clearly still very upset about having been reassigned and none of the reassurances he had offered on the fact that she would have soon got her Invader status back had seemed to be able to cheer her up or at least soothe her a bit.

"Come on, Tenn! I told you already. It will be just a short trip," he answered, but there was no real irritation in his voice. He knew that she was sort of watching out for him, even if her eyes were full of judgement, and he appreciated it. Among Irkens, it was rare. Their people weren't exactly apt to care for whatever wasn't the Empire's greatest good or the Tallest. "And I made sure that all my shifts are covered, so there will be no problem at the facility."

"And with that you mean that you have hacked into the system and made sure to have someone else assigned in your place," Tenn hissed out, clearly displeased, but she still lowered her voice when she spoke those words, not wanting anyone else to hear them. She and Skoodge had trained together for a long time and they had fought together too. She had some respect for his abilities as a soldier and she recognised that he was a very good Invader, even if he had just as evident behavioural defects. So, in the name of their shared times, she was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"You know, you really spent too much time with Zim, at the Academy. He was, and still is, a bad influence," she went on, rolling her eyes slightly. One of her curled antennae perked up and twitched in irritation, before falling back. "I'm _so_ glad that he never called me, as you said he would. My position is already compromised enough. The last thing I need is for the Tallest to think that I associate with _him_."

"Tenn!" The sturdy Irken exclaimed, this time sounding openly unhappy. "Don't talk ill of him. I know that he is…a bit of a troublemaker at times, but he isn't _that_ bad." His own antennae dropped down slightly at the memory of the oh-so-many times his former roommate had put him in serious troubles. "I mean, he can be terrible, _really_ terrible…But he has his good sides too."

The female Irken rolled her eyes again. "You're the only one who would ever think of _defending_ him. The Tallest hate him, it's pretty much official news. Not to mention…You see what happened during his Existence Evaluation, didn't you?" She looked around before continuing, lowering her voice once again. "They almost marked him as a Defective and deleted him!"

"Yes, but the Control Brains changed their mind at the very end, didn't they?" Skoodge pointed out, with a small, nervous grin. They both knew that it was because, for some reason, the machines had suddenly gone crazy, but he had to try anyway. After all, Zim had been his closest fellow soldier and he still cared for him in particular. He owed it to their past history. "You don't really think that he is…a Defective, do you? I mean, he's not your standard Irken, but he became an Invader! That must mean something."

Tenn let out a clicking sound and made a face. "What I do or do not think doesn't matter. What worries me are the _facts_ , Skoodge. And the facts are that you're leaving your place to go visit a planet that's _out_ of the Empire's borders, without an official authorisation and with the only purpose of visiting the Irken the Tallest dislike the most," she summed up, matter-of-factly. "And I don't like _that_. But it's your choice. When things will turn on you, remember that I warned you."

They had reached the section of the spaceport where the private vehicles were stored. Skoodge's battered Runner was in one of the front rows, since he had already sent in the request for it to be fuelled and prepared for departure. The pair approached the vehicle and they stopped in front of it, turning to face each other. Tenn's eyes scanned the ship for a few seconds, critically, and then she moved the same judging gaze on its owner. After a moment, though, she blinked and her magenta orbs lost a bit of their harshness.

"Is there really nothing I can say or do to persuade you not to leave?" She questioned, resting a hand on her hip and shaking her head slightly. "Because, again, this is a _really_ bad idea. Especially in a situation that is as precarious as our own."

"It will be fine. _I_ will be fine, Tenn. You'll see. And, again, I won't stay away too long," Skoodge talked back, placidly, a small grin tagging the corner of his lips. "I'll send you a transmission as soon as I'll reach Zim's base. And I'll make sure to encrypt the signal, so no one will know where it's coming from. Alright?"

"Do as you please, as long as you don't drag my already trashed reputation down with yours," the female Irken scoffed, but this time her tone sounded less abrasive. "Have a safe trip. And, if somewhere along the way you find your common sense and realise that I'm right, please, come back. I won't rub it in your face. Not too much."

"My common sense and yours will keep on disagreeing on this and many other subjects, Tenn," the sturdy alien talked back cheerfully. "I'll contact you in two or three days at most."

Tenn shook her head and then turned on her heels, hardly lifting a hand in a parting gesture before she marched out of the hangar, leaving Skoodge to glance after her retreating figure. Once she had disappeared from his sight, he bit back the third sigh and he shook his head, but the grin came back tugging his lips almost immediately. No matter what his companion had kept repeating, he was _excited_ to make that trip, even if it might have put him in troubles with the Tallest. He hadn't seen Zim since the Hobo 13 mishap and in that occasion they hadn't had much time to reconnect, for obvious reasons. This once, it would have been different, even if he of course would have made sure to stay out of the other Invader's way and plans of conquest. He knew how much winning that planet over meant to his former fellow soldier.

Humming under his breath he hurried to get inside the Runner, stopping by the back to check that everything he had packed was there and in order, before settling down and starting the engines. He was curious to find out what Zim was currently working on. The other had never told him what he had needed those blueprints for and, in the last few transmissions they had shared, his former roommate had been weirdly _evasive_. The other Invader was clearly hiding something big from him and that had definitely piqued his interest. As dangerous and messy as Zim's secrets plans usually were, they also were exciting. He couldn't wait to find out what was going on that time. It would have surely been at least unusual.

The stars greeted him as the spaceship pierced through the thick clouds that covered the Irken sky, as a bright, very familiar but always welcomed sight. He nodded to himself, fishing out a bag of snacks from a compartment set next to the main console. Finally his license period was starting to feel like a real holiday.

* * *

Hey there, everyone!

So, I more or less managed to keep my word about the date I would have posted this chapter ^^" Unfortunately, I'm starting my lessons again next weeks and I have a few other projects I have to work on too (and one will have to have the priority because it's for a Zine, so I have deadlines .), which means that I can't assure you when I'll be able to post the next one!

However, if I'm allowed some shameless self-promo, there will be a couple of IZ themed one-shots popping up in the meanwhile (a bit like the one I wrote for V-day). So, if you miss my writing (I'm so funny *notice the sarcasm please*), you can check those out!

Also, I actually wrote **two** versions of chapter 30. The first draft was actually all focused on Zim's and Purple's talk, with the actual conversation written down. However, I wasn't satisfied with it and I also wanted to start bringing up some stuff that will concern the plot of the second arc of the story...since we're approaching the end of this one (yeah, you read that right. If I don't decide to add anything else, this arc will have a total of 42 chapters and we are on the 32nd!). If you guys are curious about how the first draft looked like, I can either link a google doc where you can read it, or publish it as an additional chapter. Lemme know what you prefer!Enough rambling now! So, as I promise, this chapter has completely different protagonists compared to the usual! I've been so excited to write Tenn and Skoodge (I hope you like what has transpired of my characterisation of them) and, especially, to hint in on what might or might not be going on with the Empire. Because, "spoiler alert", I'm planning a real clusterfuck here xDI'll leave you alone now. For real ^^"

Thanks a lot to you all for sticking around! I'm so flattered to have a small bunch of loyal readers. It's really touching and very motivating! You guys are damn inspiring :3

And, of course I gotta repeat myself as I do every time, a super heartfelt special thanks to all the people who stop by and find the time to leave me a comment! Having the chance to read your opinions and ideas and expectations it's a huge burst of creativity for me. I wouldn't have got this far (especially with publishing) without your constant support!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	31. Chapter 31

The Hi Skool cafeteria was even noisier and busier than the usual. Almost all the tables were already occupied, even if the bell that marked the start of the lunch break had rung less than fifteen minutes earlier. Outside was raining once again, and hard, so even the students who had taken up the habit of eating their lunch in the yard, to enjoy the warmer spring weather, that day had chosen to stay inside.

Dib bit back a sigh as he patiently waited for his turn to get the food. Thankfully, the teacher had let his class out a few minutes before the real end of the lesson or they would have never found a spot where to sit. And, luckily, Zim would have once again been eating whatever GIR had prepared for him, so the Irken had been invested with the task of finding them a more or less secluded table, while the teen grabbed his own lunch. None of them had said it out aloud, but they had implicitly agreed that theirs was the best "team strategy", assuming that such thing could exist between them.

The teen shifted his weight on his feet, trying to unload the nervous energy that was slowly building inside his chest. It was just him and the alien that day. Gaz had another mysterious engagement that would have kept her busy for the whole time of the meal, or so she had said. He had tried to investigate and find out what exactly she would be doing, but he had quickly given up after having received nothing but glares as an answer to his questions. Deep down, though, he didn't mind her absence so much. Being around the Invader still felt pretty awkward and the last thing he wanted was for his sister to grasp the real reason behind his discomfort. Unlike Zim, she could be very good at reading between the lines, especially when he didn't want her to.

Rolling his eyes slightly, the human turned to shoot a look at the crowded room, his amber orbs taking only a few moments to find the Invader's green skin among the other, more _Earthen_ colours of the rest of the students. His rival had sat down in the corner, on the other side of the cafeteria. Dib would have been ready to swear that the table Zim had chosen had been occupied when they had first got there. He wasn't so surprised, though. He was ready to bet that the Irken hadn't had to do anything specific to scare away its four previous occupants. Most likely, the alien had simply gone to stand too close to them for comfort and that had been enough to drive them away despite the lack of another free spot. He had seen it happening before, several times. Not that he was complaining. Not in that particular occasion, at least.

He shook his head, running a hand in his unruly hair. Things had been a bit less uncomfortable between him and the Irken that morning, even though the tension in the air had all but disappeared. He had managed to stare much less than he had the day before, which was already a success. He had also felt less nervous around Zim, so much that he had succeeded in asking the alien to join him for lunch without making a fool of himself or starting the umpteenth fight. The Invader had eyed him suspiciously for a moment, but in the end he had agreed with a shrug. After all, nowadays, sharing a meal was hardly something they never did.

The thought made his lips twitch, even if he couldn't tell if it was in amusement or in exasperation. He was still having some troubles wrapping his mind around everything that had changed. After two months and a half of confusion and uncertainty, he had suddenly been drowned with revelations, about his nemesis and about himself, and it had all happened far too fast for him to truly keep up with the news. Not to mention that he was still experiencing contradictory feelings towards the whole situation, depending on how he looked at it.

The teen dropped his eyes on his empty trail, a intent expression on his face. The sight of Zim gaming with Gaz still baffled him, but, at the same time, now, instead of freaking out, it was easy to walk around the couch and sit between them, poking his rival, verbally and physically, till the alien let him play too. In the same way, while a part of him still believed that he should have punched himself for just _thinking_ about it, he was beginning to seriously consider the idea of a real _friendship_ with his rival, if the circumstances had allowed it and without forgetting the deep, _cultural_ differences that existed between them. The prospect was both scary and thrilling. And it was probably the umpteenth sign that he had lost the little sanity he had left.

That thought brought him back to _why_ he had asked the Invader to eat with him and he found himself having to add to his mental list of examples the fact that, despite the undeniable awkwardness, it had been almost _natural_ to make that request. And not just because he had a second aim, even if, perhaps, it would have been easier to believe that it was the reason. The truth was much more complicated and inconvenient. The shift in their relationship was still ongoing and he had no idea of where it would have truly led them. And, especially, what the consequences for everything and everyone would have been.

His amber eyes flew back towards where Zim was sitting. In the last two days, he had caught himself wondering, out of habit, what the alien might be planning next for his planet, before remembering that now he knew what his nemesis had in mind for Earth, at least in general, and that he was supposed to decide if he wanted to be his enemy or his ally. Thinking about Invader's offer strengthened those cursed contrasting emotions, just as thinking about the Irken himself. On one hand, there was a part of him, the same part that still hated the Invader, that found the mere idea of considering the alliance ridiculous, while another side wished to believe that them joining forces would have been for the best. The best for him, for Earth, and for Zim too. It wasn't hard to guess that the latter was also the side that was, among the other things, _smitten_ with the alien.

Dib had to bite back the impulse to make a face at the last consideration. Instead, he nodded at the server who had dumped the food on his trail and then hurried to get out of the way. The only certainty in the confusion currently raging inside his head was that he didn't have enough elements to make an objective choice on the matter. As objective as he could be whenever Zim was concerned at least. He refused to delude himself into thinking that he would have managed to come to a completely rational decision, but he wanted to try to base it more on facts and logic than on _feelings_. And that was the main reason why he had asked his rival to eat with him, the other two motives being Gaz's absence and him wanting to get used to the new emotions his epiphany had unleashed and to learn how to act _normally_ around the Irken once again.

The teen stopped once he had reached the table, hesitating for a moment before taking a seat next to his rival, instead of in front of him as he would have usually done. He did his best to act casually, even when the Invader lifted his disguised eyes from his tablet to squint at him, and picked up his fork, stabbing a bit of pasta with purpose before finally turning to meet the other's gaze. He could do this. He had sworn to himself that he wouldn't have allowed his uncomfortable realisation to get in the way, at least not when he was trying to make a decision that could have marked the fate of the Earth, and he would have proved to himself and to the world that he could reach his aim.

"Uh, can I ask you something, Zim?" He questioned, before stuffing the bit of food in his mouth, feeling proud for having kept the eye contact and for not having sounded incredibly awkward. He knew that he would have met some resistance to his inquiries, but he was ready. Uneasiness or not, he could still be as stubborn as the Irken, if he wanted to.

The wariness in Zim's expression grew deeper. He had imagined that the human had to have a reason for requesting his company during the foodening break. There couldn't be any other explanation to the proposal. It was about time that the worm child revealed his intentions. The Invader had started to wonder if he would have been forced to wait for the whole day.

He cocked his head, squinting slightly. There were only two things that puzzled him in the whole situation. Namely, the other's choice to sit next to him and the hint of confusing nervousness that still permeated Dib's attitude and whose reasons were still obscure to him. Since he had almost given up on figuring out the latter thing, at least for the moment, he focused on the former. It seemed a dumb move, as dumb as Dib's choice of the setting to hold his interrogation. In their current position, it would have been much easier for the alien to physically fight the human, and to harm him using his PAK tool if they had come to that, without the people around them noticing.

The Irken frowned even more deeply, a hint of puzzlement blossoming among his suspiciousness. Something was off in the situation and he hated that he couldn't figure out what. It was also to be said, though, that things between them were no longer the same, and not just because he had found out the truth about his mission. Since after the radiations accident, something had started to change, slowly but inevitably, leading to consequences he hadn't grasped yet.

"If you want to ask about Zim's amazing plans, don't waste your breath, Dib-beast. I will tell you nothing," he claimed in a defiant tone, raising his chin and holding the human's gaze. It felt _good_ to be able to speak those words and to mean them again, instead of reciting them just as part of an act. There was still a lot that he needed to plan and scheme and decide concerning his new aim, but just having a mission once again had given him back some of his old confidence. The betrayal and the rejection still burnt, the void in his chest wasn't completely filled. Most likely, nothing would have ever been enough to fully delete that hole because, even once he would have had his own nation, deep down he would have still been aware of being a rejected exile. However, now he had some solid ground under his feet and he wasn't utterly lost anymore. It was enough to start anew.

Dib rolled his eyes at the answer, even if he had been expecting the Irken to say something along those lines. "Zim, for the umpteenth time, I _know_ your current plan already. It's not about that," he instantly shot back, not wanting to waste more time than it was necessary to beat around the bush. He had spent half of the morning picturing that conversation, to able to immediately state what he needed to know, instead of stammering too much or stalling. However, he also wanted to make sure not to sound hostile or annoyed. Starting a fight would have been counterproductive. "It's about Irkens. Something you said last night, after the movie, made me wonder and…I wanted to ask how you guys interact with each other."

A while after Zim had departed to have his talk with Purple, the teen had left Gaz to her games, also because he didn't want to give her the chance to question him about his apparently unmotivated outburst, and had taken refuge in his own room, where he had done a bit more of thinking. He had concluded that, to avoid making a fool of himself for no reasons again, he should have gathered at least some of the basic pieces of the information he was missing, data that would have also turned out to be useful both if he had chosen to join the Invader in his conquest or if, instead, he had decided to keep fighting him.

Maybe it was a bit too late for that consideration, but he had admitted to himself that it was the kind of researches he should have done _ages_ before, after the Irken had come to Earth, because it would have allowed him to understand his nemesis way better. Instead, he had mostly focused on hacking Zim's tech or trying to sabotage, time after time, his plans, absurdly almost forgetting that his rival came from an alien civilisation that, while hellbent on universal conquest, had to have rules, laws, habits, traditions, beliefs as a foundation of its mindset. And that was exactly what he wanted to learn about now, assuming that Zim would have cooperated.

With that purpose in mind, he held the other's gaze, but his perhaps a bit naïve hopes for a discussion that could be smoother than their usual ones were instantly crushed as the Invader's frown just deepened at his answer, the hint of confusion merging with the persisting suspicion getting stronger too. It was easy to grasp that the alien had misunderstood the reasons behind his inquiry and so the teen prepared himself to fight a whole new incoming wave of accusations and wariness.

"I will not volunteer information about my race so that you can exploit them to defeat me, foolish creature," Zim stated in fact, open hostility colouring his tone. What exactly was the human trying to achieve with his questioning? Did the worm child really believe that he would have been so stupid to confide to him any possible weakness? He wouldn't have even if Dib had agreed to side with him, let alone now that he had no idea of where his rival stood. He narrowed his eyes. "Just because I was more or less forced to be _vulnerable_ in your presence, Earth monkey, it doesn't mean that I will allow it to happen again. Those were…special circumstance."

Dib made a show of theatrically sighing, this time openly parading his exasperation. "I'm not trying to get any weakness out of you and…Damn, how paranoid can you be, Zim?" He commented, resting his elbow on the table and turning his body to face the Invader more properly. "I don't want to use whatever you'll tell me against you. I'm just…curious. Not about your biology or your technology or your weapons. About your _culture_ , space boy."

The Irken stared at the human for a long, intense moment. The other seemed sincere in his claims, but, after all, studying a civilisation was the first step of any well-conducted invasion. Gaining information about customs and habits was what allowed you to blend in and, starting from there, to collect the necessary information to get rid of the planet's defences. It was what was taught to every soldier and it was exactly what he himself had been trying to do on Earth since day one. So, in the Invader's eyes, Dib's "curiosity" was hardly something harmless he could have satiated without having to worry about the other's intentions.

"How do I know that you won't use that information to infiltrate the Irken society and bring doom on the Empire?" He demanded again, putting down his tablet and mimicking his nemesis's stance. He also straightened his back, to compensate a bit for their height difference. "Don't you think that you can fool me, Dib. I might be a Defective, but, as you said yourself, I did pass all the examinations to become an Invader."

Dib gaped at him. He had been expecting to hear the most absurd protests, but the accusation he had just been thrown was the sort of plan that had never crossed his mind. "What are you even…?!" He exclaimed, so incredulous that he couldn't even finish the question.

Deep down, a part of him couldn't help admitting that, if things had gone differently, he might have ended up considering an attack on the Empire, to make sure that no alien invasion would have ever happened, even if Zim had somehow managed to reach his goal. However, he was also aware that bringing down a civilisation that had conquered more than one galaxy and that was much more advanced than his own, all by himself among the other things, wouldn't have been something doable and especially quick. The Irken technique of invasion could have surely been the base for a more complex plan, but the idea had always remained very vague and he had consciously touched it now for the very first time, just because the alien himself had brought it up.

"Zim, I'm _not_ trying to become an _Invader_ ," he tried again, in a calmer tone, even if he had to fight a snicker at the thought. The last thing he needed was for his rival to think that he was laughing at him. Then it would have become almost impossible to persuade the Irken that there were no ill intentions hidden in his questions. He opened his arms a bit. "And, even if I was planning something so absurd, why would you care? Your Empire banished you!" He hadn't intended to pour salt on the wound, but the words slipped from his mouth before he could stop them. "Or have you already forgotten about that little detail?"

Zim imperceptibly flinched at the reminder, but he forced himself not to lash out even though, once again, the human had used his confession against him. He wouldn't have given his nemesis the satisfaction of seeing how deep that little jab had got. Instead, he focused on the other source of his irritation, namely the fact that the teen was showing for the umpteenth time how little he knew and understood about Irkens' mindset. Under that point of view, giving him a lesson on how his people thought and acted without being too detailed wouldn't have been such a bad idea. It would have spared him the trouble of correcting the idiot every single time.

"It's not official yet," he hissed out, refusing to offer a more in-depth explanation on what the Empire meant and would always mean to him. He refused to speak about his banishment so casually. It was too soon. He might have found a new mission and a new goal, but the wounds were still too fresh. Perhaps, they would have always been.

"And _good_. Because you'd be an incredibly incompetent Invader," he went on, discarding the subject. "Not to mention that you would _fail_ anyway, even if, absurdly, you managed to learn how to properly handle an invasion. No one can infiltrate Irk!"

He couldn't help the proud note that filled his voice as he spoke the last sentence. His people might have mocked him, walked over him, tried to murder him, put him through endless humiliations and banished him, but that hadn't been enough to wash away all the pride he felt knowing that he belonged to such a powerful race. Even with his devotion and loyalty compromised, he would have never denied the might of his home world and of the Empire it had given birth to.

Dib rolled his eyes again and had to physically bite his tongue not to point out that his nemesis, of all people, shouldn't speak about incompetent invaders, considering that Zim was the one who had yet to manage to conquer a planet whose technology was almost _primitive_ compared to the one the Irken was supposed to possess and whose habitants were, in the alien's eyes, just a bunch of morons. Saying such things, though, would have signed the start of a brutal argument and the destruction of every chance to get an answer, so, for once, he chose not to exploit the chance to insult that he had been offered. He was sure that he would have had plenty of opportunities to make up for it in the future anyway. For now, what he needed was a change of tactic.

"You really want me to spell it out, don't you, alien scum?" He scoffed instead, rubbing his free hand on his temple. He had never intended to make the whole matter too _personal_. It was safer to stick to the version according to which he was interested in Irkens in general, and not mainly, if not _exclusively_ , at least for a great part, in a specific green nuisance. However, as per usual, Zim was forcing his hand and leaving him with no other alternative but to expose himself a bit.

" _Fine_ ," he resumed, trying to sound determined despite his growing irritation and nervousness. "I'm trying to understand _you_ , moron." He felt a hint of embarrassed heat warming his face up, but he managed to ignore it. "That's why I want to learn about your culture. To have the smallest chance to understand what the hell goes on in that stupid head of yours. I…If I must decide whether or not I want to help you, I need to know what kind of troubles I'll be putting myself in. Fighting you is one thing, and I learnt to handle it, but being on your side…That's a whole other story. And I don't know if I want to be. Or if I can." He licked his lips slightly. "Now, will you answer me or have I just wasted my breath trying to reason with you?"

The Invader remained quiet again for several moments once the human was done speaking, the suspicious and slightly hostile expression replaced by a more thoughtful one. When Dib had stated that he was trying to understand him, and not just Irkens in general, he had been ready to talk back, to state that it didn't change anything since the teen might still have intended to use the information against him.

The protests, though, had died on his lips as his nemesis had kept talking and had mentioned that his real aim was to put more order in his head so that he could make his choice and have an answer to the offer Zim himself had made two days before. That wasn't what the alien had been expecting to hear and, if it wasn't a trick, it changed the stakes. Conceding information could still turn out to be dangerous, because at the end of the day he had no certainty that his replies would have pushed the human to side with him. On the contrary, he might have ended up getting the opposite result. However, he was ready to take the risk, for the same reasons why he had answered Dib's provocations more or less sincerely the night before.

"If that's what your idiocy is about…" He finally conceded with a nod, after having eyed his rival suspiciously one more time and made sure to let the other hear every little bit of the reluctance he was feeling. "What do you want to know, human? Ask your questions and _maybe_ they will be answered by your future overlord."

The paternalistic tone with which the last sentence was spoken almost made Dib roll his eyes again, but instead he just chose to ignore it, even if he shot the alien an unimpressed look. Just to be sure. He didn't know how much of Zim's behaviour was an act and how much serious his rival truly was. Once, he would have been perfectly able to tell, but in the last two months the Irken had been a puzzle most of the times and he truly hated it. One more reason to try and understand that crazy, defective head of his.

"As I said already," he started again, hoping that the Invader wasn't just pretending to play long to to annoy him even further. "I was wondering how the members of your race interact with each other." He made a pause to catch his rival's reaction and, when he saw him simply raising a brow, he decided that, perhaps, he should have been a bit more specific. Zim could be awfully _dense_ at times.

"I mean," he resumed, biting back a sigh. "You seem to know very well what having enemies and allies means, but things like friendship and…Uh, love and stuff…" He cleared his throat a bit before continuing. "You learnt them here, didn't you?" That was mostly a rhetorical question. He remembered how hellbent the alien had been on figuring out the "human mating rituals" that one time with Tak, before her real identity was disclosed. And he also had a very clear memory of how perplexed the Invader had looked when for the first time he had heard of Valentine's Day and of the fact that he needed to make friends to fit in. "Does this mean that you never had friends or something comparable to that before?"

Zim looked thoughtful for a moment, moving his eyes away from the human and down on the dark screen of his tablet. He had understood the question, at least after Dib had elaborated it, but he was still pondering whether he should answer or not and, if yes, how much he should tell. He shot his nemesis a side glance. The query seemed innocent enough and he had already decided to give the teen the benefit of the doubt, but it was hard to persuade himself to open up, even if just slightly, after a life time of paranoia spent relying on himself only. Would being allies with Dib mean having more of those conversations and exchanges? The idea made him uneasy, even if at the same time it had its appeal. Perhaps he should have thought things more thoroughly before offering the human to cooperate. He was starting to understand that, aside from the obvious, he had no idea of what he had asked for.

"I told you already that Irkens don't share your pitiful human needs for others," he eventually began, a hint of hesitation in his voice, which however he hurried to hide. He couldn't show uncertainty if he wanted to stay in control of that conversation. "We are made and trained to function on our own. Even in hostile conditions. Our assigned tasks, the Tallest and the prosperity of the Empire are pretty much everything that matters to us."

He made a small pause. He had spoken nothing but the truth. He remembered the many simulations and missions during the training. All the times he had been locked away in a dark, cold room for days and the weeks spent stranded on hostile, dangerous planets. With no support aside from some tech and a communicator. At times even without the latter thing.

A light frown creased his features. He also remembered well the feeling of solitude that he had experienced the first three times. Then, he had mentally slapped himself and recalled that, if he wanted to prove his amazing worth and become an Invader, he would have to let go of those shameful, weak feelings. And so he had forced himself to become blind to them. The loneliness had disappeared and never come back, replaced by a mad determination to succeed, no matter the cost. Besides, every time he had come back from one of those tests, he had had a roommate who idiotically waited for him, asked him a thousand questions and stroked his ego. Even if a bit of said emotion had remained, in the back of his mind, the knowledge had made it easy to ignore it. Not to mention that he had always known that he would have got to get back, if he had managed not to get killed.

Then he had been sent on that ball of dirt, away from any other Irken or familiar element. Spending whole years on Earth had put to test his ability to suppress the melancholy and the longing that the isolation always threatened to make blossom inside him. Having GIR with him had made it more bearable, because the robot was like his old roommate to an extent. Moreover, he had been clinging to the idea that eventually he would have gone back to his people, covered in honours too, once he would have conquered the planet for the Empire. Or so he had believed till the lies had been uncovered.

However, apparently, even that fake certainty and the company of his minion hadn't been enough, considering that he had inevitably got attached to the one being he should have hated more than anyone else on that dirty world. It was hardly a good kind of bond and, on the contrary, it bordered _toxicity_ , but knowing that he would have always had Dib to fight had grounded him as much as the thought of going back to Irk.

"However, it can happen that an Irken gets closer to another specific individual than they are to the other members of our race," he resumed, dropping his eyes once again and forcing his mind back on the topic at hand. It wasn't a subject that was discussed among his people, if not for the sake of mocking whoever was so stupid not to hide it when said bond was created. "It can be a fellow co-worker, a fellow soldier, or a training mate." He took a moment to shoot the teen a glare. "Don't take Zim's words wrong. It's not "being friends", because the bond is strictly dependent on the environment and on the circumstances in which it is created. But, once the connection is made, the two Irkens involved tend to favour each other's company over anyone else's, in any situation."

He frowned slightly at his own words, going silent for a few more seconds. He could remember some very embarrassing displays of… _affection_ in which he had got entangled, always on the receiving end, of course. Unfortunately, the fact that he hadn't done anything to encourage them and that he had never accepted or returned the gestures hadn't spared him the laughter and the contempt of his other fellow soldiers.

"Usually the connection is quickly broken once one of the two is reassigned," he finished with a small shrug. It wasn't always true, because it had happened that the consequences of such associations persisted even after the material connection had been broken, but that was something that was kept quiet. Unless one was asking to be disgraced. "It can't be any other way, especially if you are in the military. Getting attached is _inconvenient_. Invaders and soldiers move quickly from a planet to another, from a war front to another. The Empire is extremely vast." He ran a distracted finger along the border of the table. "And getting killed is always a possibility."

Dib nodded slightly, in understanding. The Irken's claim that he needed no one made more sense and sounded less harsh now the alien had explained more properly the reasons that had brought his people to develop in such a way. Besides, he couldn't have got upset even if he had wanted to. Partially against his will, he had found himself getting more and more intrigued by what Zim was saying and far too soon he had started to hang on the Invader's every word. The mere idea that he was hearing all about something somehow _intimate_ that concerned an alien civilisation was fascinating in itself, but what had really caught his attention were the small shifts in his nemesis's stance as he went on exposing the subject. The other mostly looked uneasy and slightly irritated, but he hadn't missed the distant expression that appeared on his face the two times he made a pause. He had looked almost as if he was _remembering_. Did it mean that Zim had experienced one of those bonds? Was that why he had chosen to connect with him and Gaz too, in a way, once he had learnt about his exile and started to more or less consciously drop the tough Invader act? And, especially, were those temporary bonds the only kind of connections Irkens were capable of? Or could they have _learnt_ to feel something deeper and more long-lasting if they had allowed it to happen?

"Did you ever witness this kind of connection?" He asked, trying and failing spectacularly not to sound _greedy_ to know the answer. He was pretty sure that his eyes were sparkling with curiosity and interest behind his glasses. He rested his chin on the palm of his hand, half eaten lunch completely forgotten. "Did _you_ ever have one?"

Zim grimaced in displeasure at the second question, but reluctantly nodded. "Witnessed, yes," he spoke, the corner of his mouth curving down slightly. He would have really preferred not to get so much into the details, but from the look on the human's face he could tell that he would have been forced to. "Zim had two fellow soldiers who were _inseparable_ almost since their first meeting. Wherever one went, you could be sure that the other would have followed. Be it a mission, a class, a test. Or simply snacking time. Unless they were ordered to separate by one of the instructors, they even did their assignments together. _Repugnant_."

He made a face and scoffed in slight distaste, crossing his arms over his chest. He could have told so many anecdotes about those times, but he had no intention to. He was already saying way too much for his liking. "What you need to understand, Dib-thing, is that this kind of bond, especially when it gets so evident, it's frowned upon among my people. It's a sign of weakness, of _incompetence_. Of disgrace even. So, everyone laughed at them. At least at first." Even he had a snickered behind their backs at some point, careful that they didn't know about it. "It didn't last much, though. And now no one dares to laugh at them."

The teen blinked at the last statement, confused. His interest had done nothing but growing as the Irken described his counterparts' weird, unusual closeness. That sounded a lot like a human friendship. Had he grown up in a society like the one he was being told about, if he had found someone he didn't just feel comfortable with, but for whom he cared, he would have stuck by their side as much as possible too, even if it would have meant becoming the laughing stock of the class.

"Why's that? What changed?" He asked, unconsciously leaning in. "Do you mean that they are _still_ together?" That implication of the Invader's statements puzzled him even more than the actual words his rival had spoken, because it seemed to contradict everything that the alien had told him earlier. "You said that the connection doesn't last this much usually." He wasn't sure of how old in Earthen time his nemesis was, but it still had to have been quite a lot, since the Irken was talking about the times when he was still a recruit. "You were pretty adamant on that point."

"I did say that, worm child. And that's the norm." Zim shrugged. "But every rule has its exception. Besides, they are a very special case." His expression turned vexed for a moment. "They became Tallest together. Before them, for _centuries_ , we always had _one_ Tallest at a time."

It took Dib's brain a few seconds to connect the dots. "They…You're talking about your current leaders?" He asked, even if the Invader's words had already made the answer to the question pretty obvious. His mind briefly flew to the memory of very few times in which he had met the taller aliens. The two had, for the most, reminded him of a very _bad_ comic duo, but if he reviewed those scenes a bit better, armed with the knowledge he had just acquired, he could almost see what Zim had described him. The way in which they alternated each other in the conversation and the constant non-verbal communication marked some sort of weird synchrony that connected one's movements to the other's. It was subtle and he would have never noticed it on his own, especially without having had a proper occasion to observe them, but it was there.

"Uh. Wow," he commented, feeling like an idiot for his lack of words. "I mean, it's good thing for them…I guess. You get stuck with someone doing a job which is basically running an Empire for your whole existence and…It's better if you like them, isn't it? It spares you a lot of troubles." He caught the weird look that the Irken was directing at him and immediately understood that it would have been better if he had changed the subject. "Anyway." He cleared his throat once again, feeling slightly uneasy as those fake violet eyes stared and judged him so openly. "What about you, Zim?"

Zim's expression shifted for the umpteenth time as he was addressed that hateful question again and he turned his head completely away from Dib. His pose might have looked offended, but the tension in his shoulders told a very different story. There was nervousness and a hint of shame in it. If he hadn't been wearing his wig, the rigid way in which his antennae would have appeared bent down would have spoken in volume of the Irken's real emotions.

"Me? What kind of question is this, Earth monkey?" He sneered, annoyed and almost hostile, but still avoided his rival's eyes. "Zim tried to stay away from that kind of things, of course. Besides, I already told you. Everyone hated me even back then. I couldn't have formed a connection even if I had wanted to."

His attitude suddenly deflated. He had wanted to, in a way. He had always been looking for approval, admiration and recognition and he would have gladly put up with the humiliation and the mocking that came with forming a bond publicly, if it had meant getting it. That was the reason why he had allowed his roommate to get so close to him, even if he had always acted like he didn't want him around. He liked being seen and listened to. Bathing in those attentions, even if the other had annoyed him. It was also the reason why he had never forgotten about him, even after they had both moved on.

"However…There was a fellow soldier who liked me. We grew up together," he went on, the reluctance in his voice thickening. "His name is Skoodge. He's another Invader. A…decent one, even if he's a fool." He shook his head, but there was no real heat in the fake disapproval he tried to show. "We used to share a recharging chamber at the training area. He did everything I asked him, or almost. Always followed my lead."

Their attempt at reaching the surface of the planet, while against all the rules they had been taught, had been _epic_ , even if it had mostly failed. He was ready to bet that no one had ever created such a mess with the security system before. Four rotations of blackout. Perhaps it wasn't something he should have felt proud of, especially considering that it was one of the many shades of the destruction that his Defective status brought him to spread wherever he went, but it was _horrible_ enough to allow him to brag. After all, that record was surpassed only by the first blackout _he_ had caused.

His lips twitched into a bitter smirk, but then his expression softened slightly. "It was…refreshing to be believed and looked up to, instead of being kicked and frowned at. So, I guess he was the only one with whom I ever had something similar to a connection. Until…"

His voice trailed off without a warning and Zim finally turned back to meet the human's eyes again. Those amber orbs were still fixed on him, attentive and a bit awed too, and he felt his own expression changing again without his permission. He wasn't even sure of what he was feeling, but he knew that the look on the teen's face reminded him of the one the human had worn when they had been having their hideous, intense heart-to-heart talk and that he _liked_ it. He liked how his rival always seemed to see him, no matter if they were battling, squinting at each other from the opposite sides of a classroom, bickering or simply, more rarely talking as in that moment.

Dib felt his breath hitching slightly when the Invader didn't complete the sentence, a strange tension filling his chest, pushing and demanding. From how Zim had started to answer his question, he had almost been led to believe that his nemesis had never got close to anyone before, but instead the other had admitted that it had happened, perhaps even against his will, and now the human couldn't help wondering about this Skoodge guy. He remembered that name. It was most likely the same Irken Zim had been talking to when he had come to lead him to the bakery. It made him wonder if, somehow, the two Invaders had maintained some sort of connection too, through the years of separation, even if one that wasn't as strong as the bond that his rival's Tallest shared. His doubts were valid, considering that, despite what had at first sounded as a strict rule, those relations seemed to allow plenty of exceptions. Besides, Zim was a Defective, so by definition he was hardly the example of a regular Irken.

The teen, though, had found himself quickly abandoning those thoughts as soon as the Invader had met his eyes again. The look in those fake violet eyes was intense and purposeful and Dib had to make an effort to keep listening to what the other was saying. In his voice there was an echo of the same longing and wistfulness that the alien had showed during their long talk of two days before. He understood it, knew how it felt. The need of being seen, recognised, praised, believed. Those were things he had struggled and failed to gain all his life.

"Until what?" He prompted, once he had realised that nothing else would have come if he hadn't asked, hoping to push his nemesis to continue. He could feel the pull of those hidden magenta orbs and he leant in a bit more without even realising it.

Against his will, Zim instinctively mimicked Dib's movements. The air around them was thick with tension and unspoken words. He could feel the electricity in the small space that still kept their bodies apart. One inch closer and their arms and sides would have been brushing. He had to fight back the impulse to swallow, eyes widening. He could feel a hint of that wicked warmth starting to build in his chest and the distracted awareness made him at the same time horrified and dazed.

"Until I ran into _you_ and found my nemesis."

The words were out of his mouth before he could decide whether he should have spoken them or not and in that moment he was struck with the certainty that they were about to cross another of those lines they should have never overstepped. However, he didn't have the time to put the feeling into focus and understand it, because suddenly Dib was moving forward, deleting quickly the distance that still separated them, and then, out of the blue, there was something wet and _burning_ on the front of his uniform.

Zim jumped on his feet with a sound that was half surprised and half enraged, quickly trying, and mostly failing, to get off himself the food and water that the teen had dumped on them both by accidentally knocking his trail off.

"CURSE YOU, _DIB_!" He screeched, before hissing in pain as he stumbled against his own chair and almost ended up on the floor. "It _burns_!"

Dib had frozen in his spot when the alien had suddenly shot up, breaking the trance in which he had fallen. He had almost _kissed_ the Irken again, in the Skool cafeteria. What the hell had he been thinking? The answer was that he hadn't been thinking _at all_ , too caught up in the intensity of the moment, and that was even worse. For once, he had to be grateful for being so clumsy, even if he hadn't really intended to drop his food on the Invader. Still, the consequences would have been nastier if he hadn't. Zim hadn't moved away as he had leant him and, while that thought made him feel a bit warmer, he was aware that the reason was that the alien hadn't caught on what he had been about to do. If the other had realised, he would have probably punched him and yelled something about disgusting human mating rituals and how Dib wasn't allowed to touch the Mighty Zim with his filthy hands and mouth.

"I didn't do it on purpose!" He managed to protest, even if he didn't sound very convincing. It didn't seem to matter, though, because his nemesis was still too busy trying to get the pieces of vegetables and the liquid off himself to listen to him. Dib ran a hand on his face. The idiot was just managing to spread it all even more.

"Stop it," he sighed and reached out to grab his rival's arm, pulling him closer again. The Invader slapped his hands away when he reached out for the stains, but he shot him a glare. "Be still. I'm trying to _help_ , space moron."

The Invader scowled even deeper, but he stopped squirming, as much as he could considering that his skin was half _melting_ under the cloth of his uniform, and allowed the human to remove the pieces of food that were still left with a tissue. The fact that Dib made a quick work of it dissipated great part of his suspicions that his nemesis was just trying to make things worse. His offer for help appeared to be sincere.

"Here, put this under your shirt," the teen said, handing the Irken a few other, clean tissues with one hand, while he used the other to keep the wet patch of alien's uniform lifted, so that it wouldn't touch his flesh. "They should keep your skin a bit more protected till you dry off." He would have done it himself, but the idea of slipping his fingers under Zim's clothes after what had almost happened…He didn't really want to go _there_. He cleared his throat a bit. "What happened to your paste thing, by the way? It's pretty obvious that it is going to rain today."

The Invader snatched the tissues out of the human's hand and did as he was told, begrudgingly recognising, at least in his head, that it was a good idea. "Do you have any idea of how bothersome is to bath in paste every day, worm child?" He shot back instead, freeing himself by the other's grip once the makeshift protection was applied. "Why do you think I decided to go through the trouble of trying to clean your disgusting atmosphere? The next thing will be finding a way to purify your water." He made a face and crossed his arms on his chest. "And Zim doesn't always watch your stupid, primitive weather forecasts."

"Well, you should start, space boy," Dib shot back, moodily, rolling his eyes and standing up to take care of his own clothes. Most of the lunch had handed up on him, since he was the closest to the trail. Zim had just been unlucky because the glass of water had been on his side. He had to remember to keep it far away from the Irken, the next time. Not that he was planning to fail so spectacularly once again at kissing the alien. Or to try to kiss him again in the first place.

With another heavy sigh he looked down at the mess of blots his T-shirt had turned into. There wasn't much else to do about it. He would have to wait till he got back home and changed. Great. As if people needed more reasons to snicker behind his back. Still, he didn't exactly have the right to complain, since he had done all by himself.

"Let's get out of here," he grumbled under his breath and then started to head for the exit without waiting for an answer.

Zim stared at the human with his brows knotted together, as the latter marched away, not even bothering to collect the remains of his lunch. He had the feeling that he was missing something about what had just happened. What exactly had they been doing, just before his idiotic rival had dumped that disgusting Earth food on him? And, especially, what would have happened if the other hadn't made that mess?

He touched his lips with his fingers. When Dib had leant in, he had almost seemed to be about to…No, it couldn't be. It didn't make sense. Why would have the human wanted to do _that_ again? His nemesis had put just as much _enthusiasm_ as he had in their last…exchange and he hadn't denied having liked it when he had taunted him in the aftermath. However, that didn't mean anything. Did it? He himself had felt pleasure, but it wasn't a reason good enough to want to repeat the disgusting, _enticing_ experience. The worm child shouldn't have even thought about wanting it. And, even if the other had, he certainly wouldn't have allowed it. Would he?

The Irken let out a few clicking sounds as he started to quickly stomp towards the door that led in the corridor in too. He hated humans. And hated the Dib even more. Useless, stinky, stupid, confusing, frustrating…shocking, unique, _needed_ Dib. He hated him so, so much. _Too_ much, too _intensely_ to feel just hate for him. And that was the problem. It had always been.

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Hi guys!

I'm so, so, so sorry for taking this long to update, but life has been even busier than I expected and my inspiration has been dead for several personal reasons I won't bother you with! I promise that the next chapter will take much less, also because I've already started to work on it, so it should be ready in at most two weeks. Less if I can have it my way.

I'm in a bit of a rush, because I really want to get some more writing done tonight, so I won't bore you with my endless monologues today. I don't have much to say about this chapter anyway, aside from the fact that I really enjoyed writing down a bit of made up Irken lore! I said in the tags "alien cultural differences" and there we go. Tbh, I adore writing Dib also because he gives me all the possible pretexts to write these parts xD I hope you'll enjoy it too :3 It should also start giving you some insight on Zim's peculiar view of his relationship with the boy, btw! (Or at least that was my intent, even if I haven't explained the nemesis thing yet. But I'll get to that too, eventually)

I feel that I owe you all a special thank you for putting up with my weird posting schedules! Not to mention how much seeing the kudos count raising and having people contacting me to tell me about how much they are enjoying my work means to me. It makes my day every single time, and helps my mood a lot. Seriously, you guys are the best! I feel lucky to have such passionate readers ^^ You totally make up for how frustrating writing can be at times!br /

And as per usual, and even more today, I want to give a special thank you to my reviewers! I always get giddy whenever I get a mail telling me that someone has left a review! You're a constant source of motivation and inspiration!

And last but definitely not least, I want to make a special shoutout for **Amaikurai** (Ao3)/ **amaikuraiworld** (Tumblr)/ **Amaikurai05** (Wattpad), who has chosen to go through the huge trouble of translating my story in Spanish! I'm still as astonished as I am honoured for this! It makes me feel accomplished in a way that's beyond words! You can find the translation on **Ao3** and **Wattpad**!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

Enjoy!

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 **I.S.A.:** Thank you so much for your kind words! Your enthusiasm is really flattering for me! I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying the story despite my awful tendency for slow burn xD I do promise that we'll get to the "big moment", and I'll try my best to make it god for you guy ^^ Thanks a lot for the lovely review :3 I appreciated it!


	32. Chapter 32

**Warning!**  
 _This chapter contains Violence, Blood, Torture, Gore._

So, guys, I have put the M rating on this fic for a reason and, mostly, it's because of this chapter (together with some of Zim's actions and experiments in the previous ones). In the second scene, there's gonna be some gory/violent, quite graphic descriptions, so be warned.

If it's not your cup of tea, I totally understand, so lemme know and I'll add a summary of what happens in that scene ^^

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Blue. An intense, clear, gorgeous shade of blue. The sky looked even more boundless and lighter now, without a cloud in sight, but that wasn't all. The air itself was crisper, _cleaner_ than it had ever been, aside, perhaps, from the far, far away era when humans were just a bit more than animals, lacking even the most rudimentary technology.

However, the landscape that spread out under and in front of the terrace was anything but primitive. There were tall, thin but sturdy looking skyscrapers raising proudly towards the sky, all made of clear glass and smooth metal. The sunrays hit their surface and made them shine like jewels, spreading cutting glows all around them. The roads were large and tidy and plenty of green open spaces opened among the buildings. There were also shorter, wider constructions, in darker and more reddish colours, which made them stand out, in a way that, though, didn't disturb the view.

Small crowds moved along the pavements, in and out of the buildings, going around their daily life. The shapes and colours of the beings that composed them were the most variegated. Familiar glimpses of human hair and bodies, the characteristic bending of Vortian horns, flashes of green skin and Irken PAKs, the weird forms of Plookesians' cybernetic suits, even a few translucent Meekrob bodies, and many other, some completely foreign, skin tones and anatomies. The various aliens seemed not to mind each other's presence and interacted as if it was the most normal thing in the universe for them to share a space on the sidewalk. They looked and felt as if they all _belonged_ there, despite the deep, numerous differences.

Dib stared at the sight before him, amber eyes wide open and forearms resting on the metal railing of the terrace. The show playing in the roads was amazing and he couldn't make himself stop looking, even despite the utter confusion he was feeling. He had no idea of where he was. Something, a small voice in the back of his head, told him that this was _Earth_ , but he was having a very hard time believing it. It looked almost nothing like the planet he had grown up on, even if he recognised most of the flora that adorned the gardens and the parks. Everything was too advanced, too clean and tidy to be human-made. The place reminded him of a better version of the futuristic cities he was used to see in Sci-Fi movies. It was beautiful, yet it felt surreal.

His attention was distracted by something that sped off past the skyscraper where the balcony was set and the human found himself following the vehicle with his eyes. It was a mixture between a flying car and a spaceship and the curves of its form reminded him both of the designs of his father's inventions _and_ the basic lines of Irken technology. Now his head was truly starting to hurt from how disorienting the whole situation was. Where was he? A parallel universe? The future? And how had he got there?

"Master Dib?"

A voice that was, at the same time, familiar and unknown, came from behind his shoulders. The title made the teen raise an eyebrow and he lifted it even higher when his gaze landed on its owner, once he had turned around. A small, floating robot was looking at him expectantly, holding a trail up, as to offer it to him. The machine was for the most a dark gray oval shape from which two metallic arms, ending with thick pliers, emerged. It had two large greenish-blue eyes that sort of reminded Dib of GIR's and it was wearing an almost solemn expression.

The human lifted a hand to scratch his temple. "Uh, yeah? What is…" He started to ask, but he stopped as his fingertips met both skin and something harder and colder where there should have been just flesh.

He instinctively stiffened and prodded the area with more attention, his eyes widening once again, but this time there was a hint of dread mixed with the surprise. There seemed to be a metal plate, or something very similar, running along the upper left side of his face, starting right under his hairline, and tracing the curve of his cheekbone, under the thin border of his glasses. The surface of the plate seemed to be densely carved, even if he wouldn't have been able to say if the arabesques he was touching were circuits or alien characters.

A shiver ran down his spine as he frenetically touched the rest of his head, but luckily he found no other surprises. Everything seemed to be where it was supposed to be, including the scythe-shaped spike of his hair. No other additions seemed to be present, at least not in the areas he could touch. The fact reassured him slightly, but the uneasiness didn't stop swirling inside his chest, so his eyes fell down on his body next.

He blinked at what he found. He was wearing a more expensive version of his inseparable black trench coat, but the rest of his clothes didn't remind him of anything he had ever worn. Instead of his usual T-shirt and dark pants, he was clothed in some sort of uniform. The top of it was of a very dark shade of blue and it had a silver zipper that diagonally ran across the whole front, going from his right shoulder to his left hip. The collar clung tightly around his neck, but the weird cloth was so light and comfortable that he wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't run his fingers along its borders. The trousers were a shade darker, military style, much less clingy than the jeans he was used to, and provided with several pockets. They were tidily stuffed into a pair of boots, which reached half way up his shinbone. The soles were thick and, when he lifted a foot to check under them, he noticed that there were weird silvery designs carved in them. It was the same odd metal the zipper was made of and it also outlined the borders of the straps that ran around the footwear. Looking at them, one would have thought that they had to be incredibly _heavy_ , but instead he could hardly perceive their weight.

Dib ran a hand over the fabric on his chest, his confusion and worry deepening even more. Could this be another simulation Zim had forced him into? The fact that he couldn't recall how he had ended up in that place could be a piece of evidence pointing in that direction. On the other hand, though, it was also true that there seemed to be no troubles in sight. If that was another of his nemesis's tricks, then why wasn't he suffering horribly? Not to mention that the Irken shouldn't have had a reason to prank him like that again, not while he was waiting for his answer at least. They were living an actual truce, for the very first time, and he hadn't done anything to earn a payback from his rival. But if that wasn't Zim's doing, then what was going on?

"Is there a problem, master?" The robot questioned again, interrupting his troubled thoughts. The machine's expression looked puzzled now and its artificial eyes had grown bigger. "Is there an issue with your clothing?"

The teen shook his head, not really knowing what to say. His mind was too occupied analysing the situation to worry about finding a proper answer. "I…No, it's just…" He tried, but only obtained to stumble on his words. Perhaps he should change tactic. Whether he had ended up in a parallel universe or he was being the target of some sort of bad joke, he needed more information. Especially if there was something unidentified and nasty waiting ahead of him. "I'm fine. But…Where are we? And _when_ are we?"

The robot blinked, shooting him the most unimpressed look the human had ever seen, but it answered anyway. "We are on Earth, more specifically on the terrace of the Central Government Headquarters. The year is 104 after the A.G.R., of course."

Dib's eyebrow raised again and his expression turned even more perplexed. "A.G.R.?" He repeated, trying and failing to picture what the acronym could stand for.

"Amazing Great Rebirth," was the answer, which sounded at the same time ridiculous and completely unhelpful. "We celebrated the start of the new rotation one month ago. Have you already forgotten, master?"

Dib opened his mouth to claim that he had no idea of what the machine was talking about and also to add that the name sounded incredibly stupid, especially considering that it was supposed to be used to count the years. _Irken_ kind of stupid, and the notion worried him, because he was starting to get an idea of what the whole situation could be about. However, he didn't have the time to express complaints, because he was cut off by a new voice, this time a very familiar one.

"The day of the official foundation of my Empire, Dib-worm. Well, _our_ Empire _,_ since you're my loyal, pain-in-the-neck second-in-command," Zim scoffed, before waving a hand in the drone's direction. "You. Be gone." A small smirk curved his lips as he watched the machine scrambling away. "I _love_ how obedient these new bots are. It really makes me wonder why I still keep GIR around. Even if he has finally learnt to make decent snacks."

The human blinked at him, not knowing what was disconcerting him the most, the Empire thing or the fact that, if he had made his math right, he himself was supposed to be one hundred and nineteen years old while still looking like a teenager. His fingers touched the metal plate on his face once again and he couldn't help wondering if it had something to do with his prolonged lifespan and youth, before he returned his gaze back on the landscape in front of them. At least he had got one answer. In that weird reality, this was what the Invader's project had turned out to be. A nation open to all the races who wanted to join it, where Earth was the multi-racial, peaceful, prosperous core of said Empire. It was beautiful, perhaps too much to be true, but it was certainly what Dib dreamt to see his planet becoming, one day.

His amber eyes moved back on the Irken, fully taking him his figure. He wasn't any different from the alien he was used to. Same height, same magenta eyes, same green skin, same antennae on the top of his undisguised head. The Invader was lazily curved over the railing, his chin dropped on the palm of one of his hands, looking more at ease than the human had ever seen him in all their years of fighting. His eyes were half-lidded and he was scrutinising the mass of aliens that moved down in the roads, at the feet of the skyscraper.

Aside from his attitude, the only other change that caught the human's eyes was in his clothes, just as it had been for himself. There was no trace of the Invader uniform and, in its place, his nemesis was wearing an outfit that vaguely reminded him of the kind of clothing his Tallest used to wear. Instead of the eerie looking corset that reduced the alien leaders' middle to pretty much the width of their spine, Zim's abdomen was simply wrapped in clingy black cloth, on the top of which he was wearing some sort of thicker chest plate that covered the upper part of his torso. The plate had the same colour of the Irken's old uniform and so did the weird skirt that hung around his hips. The split allowed to catch a glimpse of the pair of tight black pants that covered that Invader's lowered body, not dissimilar from the ones Dib was used to see. His boots were pretty much identical to the ones the human was wearing, but the metal adorning and reinforcing them was golden. His hands were wrapped in black and magenta gauntlets, thicker around his thin wrists and slenderer around the palm and the three fingers of each hand, not to compromise the movements.

Despite himself, the teen couldn't help thinking that, dressed like that, Zim sort of looked like the emperor he was supposed to be, even if would have never admitted it out aloud. There was an aura of _power_ lingering around him and his outfit screamed royalty too. All in all, he looked… _good_. Far too much for Dib's liking and mental sanity. As if he needed another reminder of the fact that he found his alien nemesis _attractive_. His recent pitiful show in the Hi Skool cafeteria had been more than enough.

The human shook his head, willing those thoughts away. He couldn't waste his time on them, not while he had no idea of what was going on. There was still no danger in sight and the fact disquieted him more than the knowledge of an actual threat to his life would have.

"Zim, where are we?" He asked, his tone turning firm and demanding. He wouldn't have allowed the other to play him for the umpteenth time. "If this is your attempt to manipulate me to…"

"Don't you recognise the inside of your own big head, worm child?" The Irken cut him off, looking completely unimpressed with the resolution he had been trying to show. "Don't blame your own imagination on me. I'm not even the real Zim." He smirked widely, straightening his posture. "Even if I'm quite sure that he would _love_ knowing that you do picture him as your future overlord."

Dib was left blinking once again, before he finally caught up with the meaning of those words. "You mean that…This is a dream?" He asked, deciding that it was wiser to ignore the provocation. If what the alien had said was true, he really didn't want to have a confrontation about Zim with his _subconscious_. Instead, he turned his gaze back on the landscape. Now it all made sense. Why the whole place felt at same time familiar and foreign, why everything seemed to be exactly as he had pictured in his most optimistic thoughts. What he was seeing _was_ the product of his mind. "I knew that it was too good to be real…"

"It could be, one day," the alien's image pointed out, in a tone that was too casual not to be studied. The smirk was gone from his face, but there was still a spark of slyness in his magenta orbs. "If you gave it a try…"

The human scoffed, turning around to be able to fully face the Invader's projection. "Oh, perfect," he exclaimed, voice dripping sarcasm. He liked what he was seeing. He wanted to have the chance to watch it becoming a reality. He _longed_ for it with all himself. However, he wasn't _that_ delusional, not anymore. He knew whom he would be working with if he had accepted the offer, and he knew what reality looked like. As gorgeous and promising the vision was, he was aware that realising it would have been an almost impossible mission.

"My own mind is telling me that I should just give up on cautiousness and forget everything Zim has done to my planet and to _me_ ," he went on, shaking his head, bitterness colouring his words. "And what? Just trust him not to turn everything into ashes as he had done in the past?"

"No one says that it will be easy, Dib," the other talked back, his tone too serious to fit the alien's voice properly. "But it doesn't mean that it isn't possible. Perhaps the world won't be _this_ perfect, but it will be better than the one you both know now." He took a step forward, moving close enough to be able to grab the teen's hand. "Haven't you spent all your life fighting for an idea? For a _dream_? How would this be different?" His eyelids lowered slightly once again. "Unless you're too afraid of not being able to manage Zim's amazingness, Dib-thing."

The human rolled his eyes, but there was a small grin tugging the corner of his lips. He was a bit appalled by how his mind kept making Zim switch between an interpretation that was completely out of character and one that was far too similar to the real Invader. His eyes dropped to where the Irken's fingers had intertwined with his and the easiness of the gesture caught him off guard. It almost felt like they had been doing that for decades. And perhaps they had, in that dream reality.

"I can handle your craziness just fine, space boy," he shot back with a hint of smugness, tagging Zim's arm and pulling him closer. "I wouldn't have been able to prevent you from imploding my home world, if I hadn't, would I?"

The Invader allowed himself to be moved, stopping when their bodies bumped slightly into each other. Dib's free hand found the hard angle of the alien's hip and settled there, holding his rival firmly in place, while the Irken's fingers loosely wrapped around the side of his neck. The claws scratched the skin lightly, not enough to break it but still making sure that the human couldn't forget that they were there.

"Prove it," Zim hissed, a defiant, heated look on his face. His voice was low, almost threatening. The shivers that ran down the teen's spine at the sound of it, though, didn't carry fear, but much a much warmer feeling. "I'm an Irken Invader. And a Defective. Do you think that you can _tame_ me, Dib?"

"Oh, I'm not planning to tame you. Even if most likely I'd do the universe a favour if I did," Dib talked back with the same amount of confidence, leaning in. His grin had turned in a smirk that matched the one stretched over his nemesis's face, and his amber eyes had darkened. "I just want to…rein in your worst sides. Someone has to be there to prevent you from blowing up the whole cosmos, don't you agree?"

The Invader opened his mouth, clearly to protest, but the teen refused to let him have the last word as per usual and prevented him from speaking by pressing their lips together. The claws around his neck tightened, sinking in his flesh and drawing a bit of blood as Zim struggled against his hold. However, the stubborn resistance didn't last long and soon the alien melted against him, giving into his silent demand.

Dib let his eyelids slid shut, catching just in time the sight of gorgeous magenta orbs doing the same. A heartbeat later, all he was aware of were the feeling of Zim's body and warmth pressed against him, the Invader's fingers gripping at his throat and hand and of the sweet alien taste on his tongue. He couldn't help thinking that, dream or not, if that had to be his ending, he would have been pretty much content with it. A step away from him there were the blooming results of a crazy, utopian project he didn't even know he had. A project that, in his mind, he had realised while standing side by side with the most improbable life companion. It was quite _sappy_ , he couldn't deny it, but he had tasted so much bitterness and regret and failure in his own life that he couldn't give a damn about what it might have looked like from an outsider's point of view. He deserved that _sweetness_ , at last. Besides, it was _his_ dream in any case.

So, when, without a warning, the reality around him shattered in a million pieces, he just let himself fall, without offering any resistance, into the darkness that wrapped him in its embrace, dragging him down into nothingness.

╔ **IZ╗**

The next time he opened his eyes, Dib didn't find himself back in his room, as he had expected. When the previous dream had started to crumble, he had been certain that he had been about to wake up, but apparently it hadn't happened. The vision had faded away, but his mind had just thrown him into a new one, which instantly felt uglier and much less bright.

The teen blinked, trying to clear his sight. He was lying on a very cold, very dirty floor, in an ill-lit room filled with old buzzing machines and rusty shelves. Pieces of the ceiling had fallen down and there were bent metal sheets spread all over the ground. The air smelted like dust and musty and the place looked mostly unused, despite the several active computer screens. There was an eerie atmosphere lingering all around him, so intense that a shiver ran down his spine as soon as he had finished to take in his surroundings.

The human slowly pushed himself on his feet, as a new wave of dreadful confusion washed over him. He was still dreaming, he _had_ to be. There was no other explanation, unless he went back considering the hypothesis of the simulation. However, after his previous experience had gone, that explanation seemed even less plausible, compared to him having a very vivid dream. Or rather, a _nightmare_ , considering the creepy setting.

He looked down at himself, finding that, this time, he was wearing his usual clothes, even if they were in a pitiful state. His dark jeans, just as his coat, were torn in several places and stained with what looked like a thick layer of mud, while his T-shirt was all creased and faded. There was a large, brownish spot on the cloth, near the bottom of it and his instinct immediately told him that it wasn't sludge nor dirty water or anything else of the sort. He was almost sure that it was _blood_.

Dib swallowed slightly, before heading towards the closest computer console. The screen was covered in dirt and dust, so he had to use a sleeve of his own worn-out trench coat to clean it enough to be able to read the flood of data that was running on it. With the corner of his eye noticed that his nails were as dirty as his clothes, broken in a few points, and that there was a dried reddish liquid on his palms and finger. The sight made him freeze and his amber eyes fell back on the stain on his T-shirt, before he closed them and shook his head. He refused to make hypotheses on how he had got _that_ on himself. For the sake of his mental sanity.

He took in a deep breath and, when he finally felt ready enough to lift his eyelids again, he directed his gaze straight on the screen. There were numbers and acronyms quickly appearing all over the display, as if the computer had been busy calculating something or running a diagnostic. The teen forced himself to focus on the flood of data and, after a moment, he decided that it had to be the second thing, even if he couldn't tell exactly _what_ was being checked. Half of the characters were in Irken and that didn't help his understanding.

Averting his eyes from the screen, he took in the sight of his surroundings once again. Considering the disposition of the consoles, set in a circle around the centre of the room, one could have assumed that the place might have been a control room of some sort, once, or a digital archive, even if now it mostly looked like an abandoned dump.

Dib quickly checked the rest of the computers, just to be sure, but found no additional clues. He had better get out of there, also because the air was so heavy that he was starting to feel like he couldn't breathe properly.

The automatic door opened with a piecing hiss with several seconds of delay when he stepped in front of it and revealed a corridor that was just as dark and dirty as the old control room. However, there was one, frightening difference. Where his previous location had been completely silent, now the air was disturbed by muffled screams and cries that seemed to be coming from the other closed doors that opened at regular intervals in the metal walls.

The teen's breath hitched in horror and it took him all his willpower to persuade his legs to move and cross the threshold, instead of just running back inside. Trying his best to ignore the agonising sounds, he focused his attention on his surroundings, mostly to distract himself from what he could imagine had to be happening just a few metres away from him. Judging from the structure, the whole building had to be some sort of underground bunker. There was no source of natural light and on the ceiling ran what looked like the ducts of an old ventilation system. The weird whooshing sound coming from them reminded him of the laborious breathing of a dying person and it made the whole scenery even creepier.

Dib clenched and unclenched his fists. He needed to get out of there. _Quickly_. Dream or not, that place seemed to have come out of a bad horror movie and he didn't want to spend more time than necessary there. It was also triggering memories of the monster dimension in which he had ended up the first Halloween after Zim's arrival on Earth and those were thoughts that he didn't want to have while trapped in his own subconscious. The last thing he needed was for his mind to create nightmarish creatures he would have to deal with.

That latter thought was enough to unlock the paralysis of his limbs and he found himself suddenly walking, faster than he had meant, towards the end of the corridor. Every time he passed one of the closed doors, the screams got more piercing, forcing him to both fight the morbid curiosity that demanded him to peek in and ignore the stronger rush of panic that each sound evoked inside him.

The heavy metal walls finally led him to a turn and, a few meters after it, the corridor ended with another wider automatic door. He hesitated for a split second, but then he reached out and pressed the button on the control panel. Going back wasn't an option.

However, when the two shutters parted with a low sound, he instantly regretted once again having left the suffocating yet safer quietness of the control room. Dib's eyes widened in renewed horror at the sight that opened in front of him, but he didn't have the time to react because, suddenly, someone bumped hard into him from behind, sending him on the floor.

The tall, sturdy robot that had shoved him down didn't even look at him, as if it hadn't realised that there had been an obstacle in its way, and kept advancing, dragging a body by the neck. Or rather a _corpse_ , because there was no way that the man was alive. His eyes were wide open, but he was slumped, _boneless_ , and his skin, under the dirt and the dried blood, was deathly pale. What deleted every lingering doubt, though, was the deep cut that ran from the bottom of his sternum down to the level of his waistline. The blade had drawn an almost perfectly straight line and had cut past the layers of fat and muscles underneath, exposing the man's insides. The organs had clearly been moved and prodded, even cut open in a few points, and were now half hanging out of the wound. Part of the intestines had rolled out enough to reach the ground and it was leaving a trail of dark blood on the floor as the corpse was dragged across it.

The teen brought a hand to his mouth, the sight reminding him of a much worse version of the pictures that Ms Bitters had once showed them during what should have been a biology lesson, but he instantly removed his fingers as he felt something wet on his skin. He lowered his gaze and he realised that he had been shoved in a pool that had to be either bile or alien blood, or something _worse_ , and the nausea he was experiencing just intensified, making his stomach clench painfully.

In a moment he was back on his feet, rubbing a still mostly clean patch of his sleeve on his face, to get rid of the greenish substance, and took several steps backwards, till his back collided with what felt like the bars of a cell. The discovery didn't surprise him, though. The room was much larger than the one he had woken up in and it seemed to be some sort of detention area. There were robots like the one that had bumped into him spread all around, some keeping watch on the prisoners, other dragging them in and out of automatic doors, bringing them back from torture and experimentation or away for them. The floor was covered in dried blood and other biological fluids, which mixed with the dirt and which were most likely responsible for the nauseating smell that permeated the wide space.

Some of the captives yelled and thrashed when they were grabbed out of their cells, but most of them were quiet and didn't oppose the slightest resistance. It was hard to tell if it was because they had resigned themselves to their tragic fate or because they were simply physically unable to put up a fight. They were all covered in scars and stitches, too pale and thin to be healthy. There were several humans among them, but his kind wasn't the only one suffering in that mad facility. The teen caught sight of all the other races he had seen walking safely and happily along the roads of his previous dream and the contrast between the two visions filled him with crippling dread. What was the meaning of all that? Could it really be just a nightmare? He wasn't so sure anymore.

Before he could formulate any other thought on the subject, though, he felt something grabbing him by the arm, making him jump. A yelp escaped his lips as he quickly freed himself from the painful grip and spun around, almost expecting to find one of the robotic guards ready to capture him, but what he saw instead made his blood run cold.

The occupant of the cell behind him had emerged from the shadows that filled it. It had been her pale hand, the one that was now hanging limp through the bars, that had laced around his upper arm. She was wearing the same stained hospital gown that he had seen covering most of the other prisoners' bodies and her purple hair was messy and dirty, with several crusts stuck in it. There was a nasty, thick scar running along the right side of her neck and her skin held a sickly green shade. However, what instantly caught Dib's focus were her eyes. They weren't narrowed in the so familiar frown, but kept wide open by metallic circles and, instead of the amber orbs she shared with him, there were two gaping holes staring at him.

"G-Gaz?" He stuttered, incredulous, his stomach spasming again, as a whole new wave of horror rushed inside him.

"You were right. You were right all along," the girl hissed, her voice hoarse and low. She was panting, as if the mere effort she was making to speak was unbearable. "We didn't believe you and look at where we all ended up." She paused, stretching her bony arm towards him and causing him to take an instinctive step backwards. "You must run, Dib. Before he gets to you again. _Run_!"

Her voice raised on the last word, turning high-pitched, and that was enough to send Dib in full panic mode. He stumbled backwards, colliding with the hard body of another robot, but he didn't stop to see if it had noticed him. Instead, he turned on his heels and did as he had been told. He ran towards the closest door, rushing past the artificial guard that had opened it, as if his life depended on it. And it probably did, considering the urgency in his sister's voice. Her words had been a bit obscure to him, but in that moment his mind was too terrified to dwell on their meaning.

The corridor he found himself in had no doors and smelt like gun powder and dirt. The floor was covered with dried mud and a slimy substance he couldn't and didn't care to identify, not even when he slipped on it and found himself rolling on the ground. He simply pushed himself up, ignoring the dull pain in his ribcage, and resumed his running. It was as if his mind had shut down, leaving only a desperate survival instinct to guide him. He had no idea of where he was going, but that didn't matter either. He just wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself, those empty eyeballs and the strong scent of rotten blood.

He almost impacted against the next door, when he finally reached the end of the seemingly endless corridor, and it took him a few seconds to push the opening button, because his hands were shaking too badly to allow him to exert the right amount of pressure. His breath was coming out in short, irregular pants and his legs felt heavy, but, as soon as the metal shutters parted, he rushed past them, not caring about the burning in his lungs.

However, he had to stop his tracks shortly after, because his brain finally caught up with the present, informing him that he had stepped into what looked like a huge cave, with no exits in sight. Dib looked around frenetically, chest raising and lowering far too quickly to allow enough oxygen in his system. There were hunched figures all around him, digging into the rock walls, as if they were mining for something. Humans and aliens, far too skinny, abused bodies trembling under the tiredness and the fatigue, their eyes just as dull and lifeless as the other prisoners' had been.

The teen would have probably felt compassion for them, if he hadn't been too busy scanning the place for a way out. The need to get away of there had blinded any other thought and, when his eyes finally locked on what looked like a ray of light, he didn't hesitate to shove one of the miners out of the way to reach it, deaf to the pained screech that the creature let out. There was a small opening at the top of a half-crumbled wall, promising the freedom he was so desperately pursuing. He didn't even stop to consider whether or not the hole was big enough for him, but he just grabbed the closest handhold he could reach and started to climb.

The endeavour turned out to be anything but easy, since the rocks kept collapsing under his feet and he slipped downwards several times, but he didn't give up. His sight was blurred, his arms burnt as if his muscles had been on fire and his fingers were bleeding, but he wasn't really aware of those sensations. All he could focus on was the light beyond the opening, which was getting closer, even if agonisingly slowly. It was his lifeline and hopefully the way out of that nightmarish world.

When he finally reached it and was able to lift himself up, out of the hole, the exhaustion he had been able to ignore till that very moment suddenly overwhelmed him, making him collapse on the ground, coughing hard, as if he had just risked drowning. His eyes closed tightly and he opened his mouth wide, trying to get as many gulps of air as possible back into his starved lungs. All his body hurt for the efforts he had made and his limbs were still trembling badly, both for the intense emotional stress and the physical exertion. There was sweat dripping down his forehead and soaking his clothes and it took him over a minute to realise that it wasn't just because of all the running he had done, but also because the atmosphere was unbearably _hot_.

Dib took in another deep breath, which caused him another, even if lighter, fit of coughing, and finally lifted his gaze from the ground, shakily rubbing the tears and the sweat away from his eyes. What he saw forced a sob out of his bleeding lips. Once again, somehow, he knew that he was looking at Earth and, this time too, the planet looked completely different from the one he knew. However, while in the previous vision he had witnessed the shiny and peaceful face of progress, now what opened in front of his eyes was an old cemetery. Everything around him, for miles, till the horizon, was an arid desert, made of dust, dirt and the ruins of crumbled buildings. A realm of desolation and emptiness, ruled by utter destruction. He could almost hear the echoes of the screams of terror and pain that its inhabitants, now either dead or enslaved, had to have addressed the sky as annihilation fell over them.

"What…What happened here?" He breathed out, lifting himself on his aching arms, his tone filled with an equal amount of dread and horrified wonder.

"You are denser than I thought, if you need to ask such questions, Dib-stink."

The familiar voice came once again from behind his back, forcing him to contort slightly to be able to turn around and face the newcomer. A part of him had been expecting that twist of events, but for the most he got still caught off guard for the umpteenth time.

Zim was standing a few steps away from him and his looks made Dib's blood ran cold for the second time since the start of that nightmare. The alien's clothes were torn and dirty, just as his own, and he was missing a glove, unclothed claws lying at his side, covered in what the human immediately recognised as blood. And of blood were also made all the stains on his rival's body, despite their different colours. On his uniform and on his skin, even the dried sprouts on his face. One of his eyelid was half lidded, making contrast with how wide open the other eye was and enhancing the complete, bottomless _madness_ that filled his magenta orbs. His lips were curved in an ugly smirk, sharper and crueller than the ones he was used to. There was nothing but totalising insanity and lust for destruction in his expression, as if those two feelings had just swallowed everything else his nemesis had used to be, leaving behind just a possessed empty shell.

The Irken took a step forward and the teen instantly dragged himself backwards in a sudden rush of terror, which just made the smirk on the alien's mouth widen.

"What is it, Dib? Are you _afraid_ of me now? After everything we have done together?" Zim asked, his voice reflecting the same craziness that swirled inside his eyes. "And to think that you were so _eager_ to come and work with Zim, after I asked you to join me."

"I didn't…" The human stuttered, but he stopped as a terrifying doubt started to blossom in his mind. His eyes darted around, taking in the desolate landscape, as the images of the horrors he had witnessed underground flashed before them. "I…I helped you doing… _this_?" He couldn't believe it, he didn't want to believe it, but he had to ask. Could he be at least partially responsible for the devastation and the pain he had witnessed? "How…Why…"

The Invader looked around in turn, as if he hadn't noticed their setting until that moment, before turning his wild eyes back on the teen, crazy grin once again in place. "Oh, no. _This_ is my amazing doing, of course," he scoffed, sounding almost as if he was boasting. "A filthy, inferior creature like you would have never been able to accomplish such a perfect destruction."

The statement didn't do much to calm down Dib's inner agitation, even if he felt slightly relieved knowing that he hadn't actively helped his rival turning Earth into a wasteland. However, the knowledge still left plenty of questions unanswered. "Why didn't I stop you?" He asked, shaking his head. Could he even trust what the alien was telling him? For all he knew, he could be just playing him, for the mere pleasure of watching him struggling with his own doubts. "If we were…working together I should have…"

"Seen it coming?" The Irken snickered at that and the eerie, low sound echoed in the desert land. "Oh, you tried, Dib. You _did_ try." He stepped closer, walking around the human's prone form and stopping only when he was looming over him. "But you made one basic mistake and that was the cause of your doom. You never asked me, or yourself, what an Irken Defective can do. You thought that you could have kept me in check, but, in the end, _I_ dragged you down in the abyss with me. And everything else, your worthless planet, the Empire, anyone who dared to oppose me…They all fell with us."

Dib shook his head, incredulity and pure terror spreading in his chest. His mind couldn't make sense of the words his nemesis was speaking, or perhaps it didn't want to, and it left him hanging on the rope of uncertainty. Having the Invader towering over him, covering the yellowish, sick light of the clouded sky and looking absolutely inescapable, didn't help him thinking clearly.

"I…What do you mean? I…I don't understand," he managed to stutter. His tongue felt heavy and his throat was so dry that it hurt with every breath he took. He felt as if his head was spinning, even if the landscape was still and unmoving before his wide open eyes. "We…We talked about this. About you being a Defective. You never mentioned that…that this could happen."

Zim leant in a bit more, looking so smug and satisfied to be the one towering the human, for once. "I told you that Defectives have faulty PAKs. That their coding contains bunches of errors, of _corrupted_ information," he answered, his tone turning oddly casual, but the change just made his voice sound even creepier. "You know enough about technology, worm child. So, tell me. What if this corrupted code…expands? If it infects the rest of the information, like a virus, and starts a chain reaction, until there's nothing left but broken, senseless lines of codes? Those lines are translated in thoughts and emotions, when it comes to Irkens. What kind of mind can be born out of such a programming?" He made a brief pause. "I told you that most Defectives are crazy. But I never said that we are insane since the start."

Once again the teen struggled to catch up with what he was being told and, when the words start to sink in, the dread that was heaving his chest deepened to the point that, for a few, terrifying moments, he felt like he couldn't breathe anymore, as if the burden had become so heavy that it had compressed his lungs, preventing them from expanding.

"You're telling me that…You _went_ crazy?" He managed to say in the end, his voice coming out raspy. He didn't need an answer, though. It made sense, in a twisted sort of way. Zim had been overwhelmed by the revelation he had received. He had suddenly found himself not just abandoned on an alien planet to fence for himself, but also without guidance. The Invader had spent all his life taking orders, having someone who told him what to do and how to _think_. He had been given rules and forced into limits that had, more or less, reined in the most destructive parts of his personality, even if he had found a way to put at risk his whole civilisation anyway. After having learnt about his real fate, there had been nothing left to contain his deranged mind, no foundations that could give him the hint of stability he needed not to get completely lost.

Suddenly, Dib felt incredibly stupid. He had been such a fool. How hadn't he realised that his rival, free from any restrain, was a walking, ticking bomb? Why had he even just thought that he could have taught the Invader a different way of thinking, of _being_ , when that corrupted code defined everything Zim was and would be? Had he really thought that he could have, somehow, replaced all those rigid limits his nemesis still hadn't crossed, because of his undying devotion to the Empire and to his race? He had, and this was the result. The utter destruction of everything that came within the Irken's arm's reach.

"This isn't real," he stated firmly, closing his eyes. He couldn't stand to look at the _monster_ looming above him. In that moment, Zim incarnated once again all his possible failures. "This is a nightmare. I…If this was real, I would have noticed. I would have stopped you in time."

Another creepy, empty laugh left the alien's lips. "Would you, now…" He spat out, his voice colouring with mockery and despise. "What if I told you that you did realise what was going on, but you still couldn't stop me, filthy human?"

The arrogance in the Invader's voice lit a spark of anger among the panic clouding the human's mind and he laced on it with all the energy he had left. "Oh, is that so, alien scum?" He shot back, with more strength than he had showed since the start of the dream. "And tell me, how did you achieve that? You never managed to break me! Not completely!"

A weird flash passed in Zim's magenta orbs at those words. It was a cold yet very lively emotion, brighter than the insanity in which he was wrapped. It was quick to go as it had come, but something had shifted in the alien's stance during its passing. His body was tenser, his eyes less unfocused. Dib had the time to catch a glimpse of the Zim he knew before the madness took over again. Still, the added sharpness remained, both in the other's voice and gaze.

"I did something none of us has wanted to do in a very long time, the one thing that _you_ haven't been able to do even when it was your last resort," he hissed out, cruelly, and his claws laced in the front of the teen's dirty T-shirt, balling the cloth up. "Don't you remember, Dib?" His orbs fell down from where they had been fixed on the human's face. "I _killed_ you."

The teen instinctively followed the Irken's gaze and his own eyes widened in horror when he was that his nemesis fingers were no longer hooked up in the front of his clothes, but deep _inside_ his body. His abdomen was cut open, pretty much like the one of the corpses he had seen in the underground prison, but the hems of the wound weren't as neat. In some spots it almost looked as if the flesh had been brutally _torn_ apart. The damage, though, didn't end there. His lower ribs had been wrenched open, exposing the lower sections of his lungs, dangerously up to where his heart was beating frantically. Zim's claws were gripping at something inside him and he could _feel_ them piercing through his organs, like large, sharp needles.

The teen opened his lips to scream, in both terror and pain, but the only thing that escaped his lips was gurgling sound as hot blood spilled out of his mouth, drowning his words. He lifted a shaky hand and wrapped it weakly around one of the alien's wrist, but he was already feeling too numb and weak to even try to move it away.

"I'll tell you more, Dib-human," the Invader spoke again, twisting the fingers he had sunk inside the human's abdomen, his smirk taking a purely sadistic hue as more blood erupted from the teen's lips. His other hand, the bare one, which had simply been holding his trench coat slipped under his ribs. "I literally _broke_ your heart."

Dib could only stare in horror, paralysed both by thick terror and by the most intense agony he had ever experience, as the thin, unclothed wrist disappeared inside his chest, brushing against his lungs till the seeking claws found their target, closing around it greedily. What followed were a sickly wet sound and a strong pull, which left him gasping, breathless. In the back of his mind, he was aware that, if all this had been real, he would have been dead already. Instead, the nightmarish reality in which he was trapped was forcing him to bear that overwhelming pain and to stare as his nemesis held the still beating heart he had torn out of him, slowly squeezing the life out of the pulsing muscle and out of him in the process.

He barely had the time to see Zim leaning even more in, fingers finally breaking through the organ's thick walls, before the world him finally started to fade into blackness, the pain turning blinding. He desperately tried to hold onto the thought that none of what he was seeing was real, that the dream would end, that he couldn't allow it to consume his mental sanity and throw him down into the abyss the Invader had spoken of. It was hard to believe, when the agony he was experiencing felt so intense and concrete, but he couldn't lose sight of the truth. Earth was still a free planet. His sister was fine. Zim hadn't gone crazy. He was still alive. None of that was _real_.

Before everything became too much to bear, though, he felt something slippery, most likely a blood-coated hand, brushing his face in the mockery of a caress, and the Irken's merciless, taunting voice echoed in his ear, whispering cruel parting words in answer to his thoughts: "Oh, it's very much real, Dib…Or at least it will be."

╔ **IZ╗**

" _NO_!"

Dib woke up screaming his lungs out, shooting up in a seated position. His hands instantly ran to his torso, patting his chest and abdomen to check that everything was closed and in place, and only once he had made sure of it he felt allowed to try and slow his quick breathing down. His pyjamas and hair were drenched with cold sweat, his skin was hot as if he had been running a fever and he was still shaking, the images of the nightmare lingering before his eyes, together with the memory of the intense agony he had experienced when Zim had literally torn his insides apart.

The teen swallowed slightly, finding that his throat was dry enough to hurt. His stomach was contorting painfully and he could almost taste the blood that had flooded out of his mouth, while his nostrils were still filled with both the acrid scent of the underground prison and the stench of misery that soaked the air of the destroyed version of Earth he had seen. He was aware that those sensations were just a product of his still shocked mind, but the knowledge didn't help him feeling better and, eventually, he forced himself up on his shaky legs and headed for the bathroom, afraid that otherwise he would have ended up spilling bile and what was left of his dinner on the floor of his bedroom.

The brightness that filled the room when he switched the light on blinded him for a moment and he found himself advancing carefully, eyes tightly shut, till his hands closed around the cool ceramic of the sink. He stepped closer, leaning heavily against it for support and taking in a few, slow breaths, before slowly trying to lift his eyelids. The sight that met his gaze was hardly reassuring, even if it was nothing compared to watching his nemesis tearing his heart out of his chest. His sweated skin was a few shades paler than it should have been and his eyes were red, the deep bags under them only giving him an even sicker look.

Dib clumsily opened the water and collected some of it with his hands. The coldness of the liquid on his face finally seemed to ease a bit the anguish that still swirled in his chest, but it also caused a new shiver to run down his spine. What was he supposed to make of those dreams? The first had been an amazing projection of his hopes and wishes, but the seconds had somehow felt more than just the fruit of his insecurities and fears. The horrors he had witnessed had been much worse than the most awful of Zim's plans, even if he had almost no doubt that his nemesis would have been capable of such atrocities. The Irken's cruelty, when unleashed, was boundless and the alien had showed in several occasions how sadistic he could be. His mind had just offered him a picture of how the Invader could become if the madness lingering in his coding had swallowed him whole. The idea that it could happen scared him to death.

He brought some more water to his face and he shook his head, letting the drops fall down, in the sink and on the front of his pyjamas. There were so many things of the second vision that disturbed him, the first being how confidently Zim had stated that he hadn't been able to kill the Invader even when it had been the only thing left to do. Should he interpret it as a warning that his subconscious was sending him? Before that dream, he had been utterly persuaded that the recent turns in his relationship with the Irken hadn't undermined his priorities, that he would have still managed to do the right thing, if it had been necessary, no matter how unpleasant it might have seemed. Now, he wasn't so sure anymore. Not to mention that had been implied in the alien's word, when he had told him that he had _literally_ broken his heart, what was the cause behind his failure in protecting the planet. He refused to believe it, but the fear that it might be true lingered in his chest.

"What the hell is wrong with my brain?!" He groaned loudly, gripping at the locks of hair that were falling on his forehead. He almost wished that he hadn't insisted on wanting to find out what was wrong with Zim, that he could have kept on being his enemy and nothing else. Perhaps he wouldn't have found himself stuck in such a dangerous, consuming mess.

"Dib, it's the middle of the night. Cease your moronic antics or I will turn your reality into something worse than whatever nightmare you just had."

Gaz's voice echoed in the bathroom without a warning, causing the older teen to start. He whipped his head around and he found himself starting at the girls standing in the doorway. For a moment, his mind flashed her as she had looked in his nightmare, a sick, pale, eyeless ghost, but her real image immediately replaced the frightening memories, showing him his sister in her pinkish night clothing, arms crossed over her chest, eyes still in place and narrowed in a frown. For the first time in ever her anger caused him to feel relief instead of fear and actual _amusement_ at the thought of how scary she managed to look, even while wearing pig-themed pyjamas. The umpteenth proof of how messed up his brain currently was.

"Gaz," he let out, sounding far too happy than he should have. She had to notice, because her scowled deepened, and Dib finally felt a spark of healthy worry at the sight of her expression. "I…Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up. Just…It was a really bad dream." It was an understatement and it was surely not enough to placate his sister, but he couldn't really bring himself to care. He was just glad that none of it had been real. Even though, if he focused hard enough, he could almost feel the warmth of the first dream, under the layers of dread left by the second…

"Get yourself together and stop being a pain in my ass," Gaz stated harshly, cutting through his thoughts once again. She made to leave, but she still turned her head to shoot him another, heated murderous glance. "I have to get up early tomorrow. So, finish here and go back to bed, before I decide to kick you out of the house. _Permanently_."

Dib rolled his eyes at the last sentence. He was _almost_ sure that she wasn't serious, because he hadn't pissed her off _that_ much. Not yet. "I guess I'll just ask Zim to become his housemate then!" He shot back, sarcasm soaking his voice, together with a hint of irritation. That idea was even more absurd than him and the Irken teaming up to conquer the planet. "I'm sure he'll be _thrilled_ to have me."

The girl stopped her tracks at the provocation, while he would have expected her to keep heading back to her room, and turned around again, studying him for a long moment, one eye open. Then she did something that the older teen would have never anticipated: she _smirked_. Her lips curled up just slightly, but the smugness in that small shift was so deep that he could have never missed it.

"That's a show I'd love to see," she stated with a tone that was almost amused. "You two morons would either end up annihilating each other or never want to separate again." She shrugged. "In any case, I'd be rid of you both and that would make my life so much _easier_."

Dib could do nothing but staring as she finally took her leave, disappearing in the darkness of the corridor, astonished. Every time he thought that he had finally managed to learn to predict Gaz's reactions she surprised him. Maybe it was time that he resigned himself to the fact that he would never manage to read her like an open book, especially now that her personality, while keeping its fundamental anti-social traits, had started to evolve into something more than just harshness and dislike for the world. Besides, she was a _girl_ , fact that was harder to forget now that her body was starting to be shaped by puberty too. She was complicated by definition.

Shaking his head, he washed his face once more, before drying off and heading back to his room. The exchange with his sister had helped calming him down, as seeing her fine and in good shape had. His hands had stopped shaking and he was feeling like he could breathe properly again. However, the last words that the Zim of his nightmare had spoken before the vision ended still echoed on in ears, clear and terrible like a bad omen.

 _"_ _Oh, it's very much real, Dib…Or at least it will be."_

He clenched his fists in the sheets as he sat down on his bed. There had been something _final_ in the way the vision of his rival had spoken those words. The memory caused him a stronger visceral reaction than all the other horrors he had witnessed while trapped in his own mind. He would need to talk to the Invader about Defectives once more. He needed to know if what his brain had suggested was possible, if the alien could have, at some point, gone even crazier than he was, turned fully and permanently into the monster he knew Zim could be when he chose to. If there was a chance that it could happen, they would have needed to find a way to prevent it. For everyone's sake, the Irken's included. As much as his nemesis enjoyed pain and destruction, he was ready to bet that Zim wanted to be more than just that.

As he laid down again, pushing away the still slightly wet sheets, another thought hit him. His mind had showed him just visions of what could have happened if he had accepted the Invader's offer, while a scenery where he turned it down hadn't been contemplated. He couldn't help wondering if it meant that his subconscious, despite all the lingering doubts and fears, had already made a choice, while his consciousness still struggled, lost in indecision.

He glanced out of the window, towards the starry sky. He had always wanted to be out there, exploring other planets and civilisations, having adventures of all sorts, opening mankind's eyes to all the possibilities his people were still refusing to see, validating himself against the mockery he had been forced to endure. That considered, would have he really been able to turn down the opportunity to achieve all that? A chance that perhaps he wouldn't get to have ever again? He knew the risks, he was aware of how much was at stake. But could they be enough to stop him from choosing everything he could gain? There was a hand stretched out for him to take, a hand that could have allowed him to work and make all his dreams a reality. Did it really matter so much that it was his nemesis's, with all that it implied?

Dib intertwined his fingers behind his head, wishing that the shining dots could wipe away the indecision in his head with the same force with which they broke into the darkness of open space. There had been several times, in the last few weeks, in which he had found himself thinking that the universe had been trying to tell him something. At first, he had believed that the cosmos was just stating that he was lost to the world because he had gone mad for real. But what if, instead, it had been attempting to tell him that this insane path was the right one? That he should have taken that hand exactly because it was _Zim's_?

* * *

So, guess who's late again? Yep, me. I don't even know if I should keep apologizing, because I'm not even sure if you believe me anymore (even if I mean my apologies for the record!)

Easter holidays should have been a time for me to study and write, but instead they turned out to be a mess and I basically did very little of both =.= But well, I managed to put this chapter together and...I don't hate it? Tbh, I've been waiting for the chance to write something horror and this chapter gave me the perfect opportunity. Plus, I think that dreams were a much more entertaining way to explore Dib's current wishes and fear, instead of just submitting to you the umpteenth inner monologue ^^" I hope you enjoyed the format! And I'm eager to hear your thoughts on it u.u

I won't bother you for any longer this time (also because I'm typing this on my phone in class) and I'll just move to thank you all for sticking with me ^^ Your support, in any form, means a lot to me! More than I can honestly say. I hope I'll never disappoint you!  
To my reviewers, a very special thanks. Your comments always brighten my day (and I do need it these days honestly), and I can't say how flattered I am to have your interest! You're awesome!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	33. Chapter 33

The corridor was empty and quiet as Zim followed the by now familiar route. His eyes briefly touched the still unrepaired hole that he had made in the air duct over a week before, but he didn't stop. When he had left Ms Xander's office that day, he had thought that he would have never come back. Not to that room and perhaps not even to Hi Skool. He had been pondering the idea of blowing up the whole planet. Or to just leave it behind and never look back. He had been so angry and empty at the same time. He had felt like he was going to explode and he had been determined to take the whole universe down with him.

Now, things were completely different. In the matter of a few days his existence had been turned upside down once again and the most absurd thing was that he had to thank that same order that had made him lash out for the new, much more welcomed change. The weird chain of events that the discovery of that cursed spice had started, the day when GIR had accidentally fed him the cinnamon-flavoured waffles, had led him where he was standing now, past the second plot twist that had redesigned his life. The first unexpected turn, the eavesdropped conversation and the revelation it had brought him, had shaken his existence so hard that it had crumbled, leaving behind nothing but ruins and emptiness. This second one, on the other hand, had been the unpredictable consequence of a hideously weird, pointless situation, which should have caused him just humiliation and problems and which had, instead, ended up being as important as the first.

Zim's eyes narrowed slightly at the thought. If he hadn't followed his Computer's suggestion and pranked his Tallest, setting into motion all the events that had followed, who knew if and when he would have got a bit of control back on his life. Most likely, he and Dib would have never talked and the human's words would have never insinuated in his head the idea that he could be something more than a just a Defective in exile. Or, rather, that he could have built something out of being one. Something amazing, new and powerful that wasn't utter destruction. Perhaps, eventually, the idea of creating his own Empire would have come to him, but it might have been too late. So, on one hand, the memory of what had happened still horrified him, in an odd, fascinating way, but on the other he was now starting to see how _fundamental_ that series of hideous coincidences had been. They had pushed his life off tracks and then set it on a new road.

Irkens didn't believe in destiny. It was a completely foreign concept in their culture. They trusted the Control Brain and the Tallest, in their infinite wisdom, to walk their race along a path of endless glory and conquest. There was no need to think of a superior, mysterious force when you were persuaded that you would have won and dominated simply because you were good enough to do it. All that messy domino effect that had devastated and reshaped his existence, though, almost made Zim want to wonder. _Almost._ The kind of life that had been forced on him was hardly what he had pictured for himself and it wasn't what he would have wanted. However, it was to be said that the reality in which he had lived till a few months before had been a mere delusion, so whatever plan he had made for it had been fated to fail since the start. And, considering the alternatives, the road he had found himself on wasn't so bad. Uncertain, disorienting, weird, but not hateful.

His fingers hesitated just for a moment before he wrapped them around the handle and made himself push the door open, without wasting any more time stalling. The temptation to freeze one step away from the door, as he had done when he had showed up to the office to tell the counsellor his story, was there, but breaking the stasis was much easier this time. Just as a lot of things were simpler now. Walking with his eyes set in front of him and not on the floor. Boasting and yelling and fighting to stand his ground. _Breathing_ , because even that had got harder in the moments when the emptiness had reached its lowest depths.

Ms Xander's head shot up as she heard the door opening and the surprise in her expression was so evident that even a blind man would have spotted it. Even if that was the time for her session with Zim, she had already persuaded herself that he wouldn't have come, just as he had skipped their previous appointment.

She had been extremely concerned when,, on Monday, her patient hadn't showed up for his classes and the fact that he had come back on Wednesday hadn't reassured her, considering how their last meeting had gone. She had realised that she had triggered something in him, something violent and _dark_ , even if she hadn't been given the time to understand exactly _what_.

She had been tempted to go to his house and check on him, and the idea had haunted her for quite some time, but in the end she had decided against it. She wasn't the right person to help the teen out of whatever black hole he had fallen into. Her intervention would have probably just made things worse and that was a risk she couldn't take. No matter how worried the lack of news had made her. She had forced herself to hope that Dib would have been able to do what she couldn't and told herself that Zim would have come back when he would have been ready. Maybe hers had been dangerous hazard, choosing to leave everything in the two teens' hands and up to their weird twisted bond, but apparently she had made the right choice.

Still, when he stepped in, her blue eyes ran over the alien's body, almost anxiously, as if they had been looking for a sign that could tell her what consequences their last talk had had. Actual wounds, an abnormal amount of tension, a shift in Zim's attitude that could have meant that he had done something he shouldn't have. Her astonishment only grew when she found none of those sings and, instead, noticed that yes, there had been a change in her patient's stance, but not of the kind she had been expecting. She had been afraid of finding anger and lust for destruction written in his body language. What she saw was that his shoulders were more relaxed, his attitude less closed off and more confident. Even his eyes looked brighter and less empty.

"Zim!" She exclaimed, unable not to sound astounded, and stood up from her chair. "I…Are you alright? You had me _really_ worried."

The Irken nodded, ignoring how she seemed to want to reach out for him, as to make sure that he was truly there. However, he would have lied if he had stated that her sincere and open display of interest hadn't touched or flattered him. It made him a bit uncomfortable, both because he still wasn't used to see such concern addressed at him and because it was a show of weakness from her part, something that his people tended to instinctively dislike. At the same time, though, it filled him with the same warmth that her praises gifted him. Humans were such weird creatures and he was starting to realise that, perhaps, he had been rushed in dismissing them as brainless, blind idiots. It was getting quite clear that, while most of mankind fitted that description, there also were shocking exceptions to that general rule, exceptions he couldn't ignore if he wanted to become the ruler of that mostly primitive, miserable ball of dirt and turn it into something worthier.

"Zim is fine, Acelynn-doc. Better than I have been in a long time," he stated, taking a seat in his usual chair. "What happened during our last encounter…You should forget about it. It's no longer of import. I came here today to let you know that I won't be needing your services as counsellor drone anymore." He held her eyes without wavering. "I found a new mission. A…more constructive one too, as you suggested during our previous sessions." He made a brief pause, looking like he was pondering something deeply. Then he nodded once again, this time to himself, and went on. "You did a good job. Zim found that you are very… _competent_ , for a human. I benefitted from our deal much more than I expected." He narrowed his eyes, his expression turning almost suspicious. "You have better treasure these words of mine, because I will not repeat them."

Ms Xander blinked, left speechless for a few moments. She hadn't known what to anticipate when the Invader had stepped into her office, but being "fired" because he had solved his problems, or so he seemed to think, wasn't what she would have expected to hear. It was true that Zim looked better, better than she had ever seen him, but she was a bit hesitant to let him go without an explanation. There were still so many things she hadn't been able to grasp about that strange boy and she was a bit wary to believe that he could have come up with a new life purpose so quickly, especially a _constructive_ one. If there was something she had learnt about him was that Zim had a very _unique_ view of the world, so there was no way of knowing what "constructive" might mean for him.

"Zim, slow down. You lost me," she said taking a deep breath and lowering herself back in her chair. She rubbed a hand on her temple, finally managing to collect herself, and then moved her gaze back on her patient, who was still staring at her, expectantly. "First of all, I'm glad to hear that you feel better. And that you've made progress. Also, thank you for the…compliment." It had been one, even if it had sounded more like a concession. "However, I think that you're been a bit too hasty in wanting to…put an end to our association. You might have found a new mission, but that doesn't solve all your past issues. It's a big success, but you still need to work on those, to heal completely."

She shot him a meaningful glance that however was met by a mostly perplexed look, which made her want to sigh. At least that was familiar. Still so clueless on things that should have been obvious. "Let's start from the beginning, alright?" She went on, deciding to change strategy. "What changed in the last few days? I can see that something is different in you. However, I'm a bit worried because it happened so…fast. How did you find your mission? And what exactly is it?"

One of the Irken's eyes narrowed at the questions. "You should know it, Acelynn-doc. You told the Dib about Zim's situation," he stated, with a hint of hostility. While his rival had been right when he had told him that the counsellor had acted out of worry, in the hope that she could have helped, he hadn't forgiven her the fact that she had broken their deal yet. "He told me that you did, to force me to talk to him. And we did…talk."

The memory of how that particular conversation had gone evoked contrasting feelings in him. He wasn't even sure of what disturbed him more, the fact that he had showed so much weakness and vulnerability, something that any Irken abhorred by principle, or the _smooching_. He shifted slightly in his chair, dropping his eyes. That tingly warmth. As much as he tried not to think about those sensations, they still confused the hell out of him. And the weird way in which the human had been behaving in the days after "Freaky Accident Part II" hadn't helped.

"Zim?" Ms Xander called out, since her patient had been quiet for almost a whole minute, looking like he had forgotten that he was supposed to finish answering her inquiries. Her eyes narrowed for a moment. She had seen that conflicted expression before. It wasn't so different from the one that Dib had sported before confessing that he and Zim had kissed. A wave of curiosity washed over her and, for a moment, she was strongly tempted to ask, but she pushed the impulse away. That would have been highly _unprofessional_. And she had already crossed far too many ethical lines while dealing with the odd teen. She couldn't do it again without a good reason. She would have had to wait until Zim would have been ready to face that subject. One more reason to persuade him not to stop his therapy.

The alien blinked at her, catching something obscure in her expression that he couldn't interpret. The fact made him experience a spark of paranoia, as it always happened when the woman seemed to have figured out something before him, but then her expression relaxed and he felt allowed to do the same. Till she didn't grasp the secret of his identity, everything would have been fine.

"We talked," he resumed, realising that she was probably waiting for him to finish his tale. "He was very…insistent, so I told him everything. About my banishment, the crimes my Tallest accuse me of having committed, my status as a Defective. And he was… _supportive_."

He made a face at that. He didn't like the word, but it described the way the teen had acted towards him. He hadn't mocked him, hadn't exploited the openings he had offered to finish him, hadn't even poured salt on the wound. Well, not too much. Dib had…understood. As if his confession had somehow brought them on the same plan of reality, underlining similarities they had done their best to ignore or deny till that very moment.

"He told me that it doesn't matter what my Tallest think of me, what…everyone believes I am. That I can prove them all wrong, because I've got the potential to do it," he went on, his tone turning almost confused. Repeating the human's words out aloud made they sound even weirder. "And he told me what you said me more than once. That he will keep bothering me and stepping in my way, even if my mission is a lie. Or that we can find another way to interact…if our goals somehow become compatible."

The counsellor nodded as he spoke, feeling a hint of pride for both teens. When she had talked to Dib, the boy had sounded incredibly insecure and awkward, but apparently he had done a great job handling Zim, luckily for them all. The fact that her patient sounded so perplexed amused her, and she allowed herself a small grin after he had admitted, not without reluctance, that she had been right.

"I won't tell you "I told you so", Zim, but I did," she joked lightly, scribbling a couple of words on the notebook that had been waiting on the desk, next to her elbow. "And, if you want my opinion, I think that you and Dib are more similar than you care to admit. You're both…outcasts, in different ways, and your peers perceive you both as different. _Crazy_ , even if it's not a word I like to use. You're both shunned away by others, left to fence for yourselves. Emotional pain is something that tends to bring people closer, especially when they can relate to each other's troubles." She eyed him carefully. "The fact that he managed to…open your eyes shows how much you two would be able to connect, if you didn't let the hatred get in your way so often. Have you ever considered that?"

The reluctant expression blossomed back on the Irken's face and he glanced away once again, but he still forced himself to nod. "Zim did. And that's why I asked the worm child to help me with my new, amazing mission instead of fighting me," he admitted, his lips curling down in a frown. There was a part of him that regretted that decision, as many others, but he had almost completely stopped listening to it. "I'm waiting for his stinky head to make a decision." He scoffed. "Of course, he would be a fool to turn down the chance to work with _me_."

"He would now, wouldn't he?" The counsellor echoed, her tone half amused and half thoughtful. That was a turn she hadn't expected to see, not so soon at least. Whatever conversation the two boys had shared, it had to have made a huge impact on her patient. "Then why do I have the impression that you aren't very sure that he'll join you? And that it will work out fine?"

The alien's frown deepened. He really hated how she seemed to be able to read him, even when she was, at the same time, blind to the truth written on his green skin. Her fingers pushed away the layers of his confidence, pretended and true, so easily, digging themselves inside the deep, endlessly bleeding cuts of his insecurities. Too often he had felt bare in front of her, as bare as he had been during his Existence Evaluation, and that always unsettled him. And yet, deep down, he knew that her inconvenient ability to look past his mirrors and masks was one of the main reasons why he had kept seeing her.

"Zim doesn't completely disagree with your statements. The Dib and I share…some similarities, for a lack of a better word. He is my nemesis," he answered carefully, making sure that his voice carried a noticeable hint of distaste. "But we have been enemies for a long time and the Earth monkey is too attached to his stupid values. They cripple his vision. Not that this surprises me. He is _human_. There is an abyss between us. No alliance will ever be able to fill it." His lips curled again, in an expression that looked almost disgusted. "Besides, I have been trained to work alone. To…need no one."

That statement hardly seemed true now, and perhaps it had never been. He had done well on his own, but the reality was that he had _never_ truly been alone. Back during his training years there had been Skoodge. When he had been transferred to the Weapon Department there had been Prisoner 777, before they permanently transferred him to the detention facility he was currently held in, and a few other scientists who had, reluctantly and almost never willingly, offered support. On Foodcourtia, he had found a way to exploit his co-workers and even Sizz-Lorr. When he had been sent on Earth, he had had GIR and his Computer. Then, Dib had come into the picture.

His antennae twitch in mild irritation under his wig. While he had always prided himself of being able to get his work done on his own, in truth, whether he liked to admit it or not, it had never been just him. He had often pushed the others down and walked over them, at times _literally_ , to be able to reach his aims. He had fed on them, on their blood, their energy, their minds and lives and had used them to thrive even in the darkest situation. His experience on Hobo 13 was the perfect exemplification of the way he worked. He had mercilessly sacrificed every single member of the team to succeed and get away with his life.

He crossed his arms on his chest. There was a huge difference, though, between using others and working with them. And, while the first came natural to him, he had no idea of how to do the second thing. One more reason why asking his rival to side with him had been a very stupid idea. He had no intention of making Dib an equal of course, especially not officially, but he couldn't have ordered him around as he did with GIR and his Computer. The human wouldn't have allowed it and, if he had tried, they would have spent more time fighting than working on his plans for the future. He needed a good strategy for the eventuality in which he would have found himself with a second-in-command.

"Let's make another deal, Acelynn-doc," he spoke after a couple of minutes of silence. He couldn't afford to fail in this new project of his, even if it meant admitting his lacks. His existence was at stake. The woman had been a valid tool to solve his previous problem, so he had no reason to think that she wouldn't have been this time too. "I will keep seeing you to work on whatever issue you still think Zim has and, in exchange, you will teach me how…team work is done. The general terms are the same of our first agreement. But _no_ breaking them this time."

Ms Xander tilted her head slightly. That wasn't exactly what she had in mind, especially considering that, from how he had spoken, her patient had sounded like he didn't believe he had any issue left to solve. However, she knew him well enough to know that she wouldn't have got more than that concession, so she had better take the deal and be ready to do twice the work she would have normally done. Because teaching Zim what he was demanding wasn't going to be easy. At all.

"Deal," she nodded, trying not to sound like she had just resigned herself to a very painful fate. "I accept your terms. But you will have to put as much efforts in meeting mine. Alright?" The casual nod she received didn't reassure her, but she let it slide, for the moment. There was something else she wanted to inquire first. "By the way, Zim. You still haven't told me what your new mission is. Shouldn't I be allowed to know at least the general plan, if I'm supposed to help you out?"

The smirk that opened on the Invader's face at that question was utterly terrifying and his fake violet eyes sparkled dangerously. "Oh, Acelynn-doc. Zim won't tell you now," he replied, shaking his head and leaning against the seatback. The knowing tone he used just made him look creepier. "But I can promise that you'll learn of it soon enough."

 **╔ IZ ╗**

"Zim asked me to help him conquering the Earth."

Gaz blinked at the sound of those words, her mind taking a moment too long to put them into focus. She and Dib had been sitting on the couch for over one hour, pretty much ignoring each other, and she had assumed that it would have been all they would have done that night. She hadn't expected her brother to speak out of the blue, let alone to say what she thought she had just heard.

Her eyes opened, the almost ever-present frown distending, and she fully turned her head in Dib's direction. The older teen kept his gaze fixed on the TV, amber eyes apparently interested in the scenes playing on the screen, but the slightly distant expression on his face told a very different story. His thoughts were anywhere but on the movie he had been staring at for the last half an hour. She was ready to bet that, if he had cared to look back at her, she would have spotted in his eyes the same hint of thoughtful hesitance that the tone of his voice reflected.

The girl blinked again, hating the fact that she had been left speechless for the first time in a very long time, and swallowed the impulse to ask her brother to repeat himself, just to be sure that she had heard it right. As absurd as the news might have sounded, it wasn't completely impossible, considering the recent shift in Dib's and Zim's relationship. She wouldn't have pushed it far to the point of defining them as "friends", but it was quite clear that they weren't enemies anymore. Not in the way they had used to be, at least.

"And you're thinking about it?" She questioned instead, raising an eyebrow at the older teen before deciding that she had given him enough attention and turning her eyes back on her game, just to find out that those damned vampire pigs had killed off her character. She hissed out a quiet curse and hit the reset button. "I don't see where the issue is. Tell him "no", Dib. He'll sulk for a while, but he'll get over it." She shot him a side glance and her voice took an almost interrogative hue. "Unless _you_ have changed your mind about this stupid planet."

Dib finally turned to look at her at the last statement, his expression morphing into a displeased frown. "Of course I have _not_ changed my mind about protecting Earth, Gaz! How can you even think such a thing? After all I've gone through during the last four years to keep the world safe!" He answered, rolling his eyes in evident irritation. The emotion, though, wasn't directed just at his sister, but at himself too. He should have done what she had said, namely refusing the Irken's offer, because that conversation, just as his doubts, was ridiculous. Or at least, they would have been if things hadn't changed so much.

"I don't want mankind to be destroyed or enslaved by an alien Invader." The images of his nightmare of the night before came back at full force. He would have been ready to do anything in his power, and even to try the impossible, to prevent such an ending for his planet and for whoever else might have got involved in that wave of destruction. "I'll never change my mind about that. Even if I'm starting to think that, _maybe_ , you and Zim have a point. Humans are asking to be killed off. Or ruled by someone else."

Gaz scoffed. "When have you suddenly grown a brain, Dib?" She commented, sarcastically. "It was about time. The next step is to stop being such an obsessed wimp. I won't ask you to stop being a moron. That's impossible."

The older teen glared again, but he decided not to answer the provocation this time. He hadn't spent the last hour tormenting himself to find the guts to tell his sister about his dilemma just to get lost in a petty spat. The dreams had somehow made the choice look even more urgent and he had concluded that it was something too big for him. He needed an advice and Gaz was the only person who could have given it to him. Not just because she was the only one to know the truth about Zim, but also because, with her constant detachment and indifference, she was the less biased person he knew. So, she could doubt his intelligence as much as she wanted, but he wasn't going to let her words get under his skin. Not this time. It was too important.

"I haven't changed my mind," he repeated, before looking away. He wasn't sure about how much he should tell about his nemesis's exile. She would have never believed him if he had told her that the Invader had simply decided to defect his people. Besides, it wouldn't have explained how much the situation had changed. "Zim has. Well, sort of. Not that he has any other alternatives, considering his situation, but… _Still_. He doesn't want to destroy Earth anymore. Or enslave it. I mean, he's still aiming for world domination, but it's different." Different as a world made of shiny metal, interracial peace and solid prosperity was. "And he asked me to be his…partner-in-crime for the creation of a new interplanetary empire."

It was the girl's turn to roll her eyes. Her brother was usually far too forthcoming with information when she didn't want to listen and always gave too many, unimportant details, but now that she was trying, for once, to understand what the heck he was rambling about, the moron wouldn't speak clearly. She hated people who talked in riddles. The world would have been a much better place if everyone had learnt to be straightforward, that was something she was intimately persuaded of.

A small growl escaped her lips and she switched off her game, setting the console down on the coffee table and turning to face him fully. Perhaps this way the idiot would have got that she was being _deadly_ serious and that she wouldn't have hesitated to beat him up, if he hadn't started to make sense. _Quickly_. She wasn't a patient person, especially not when her evening was being interrupted by some annoying, confused rambling.

"Dib, spit it out and stop this cryptic nonsense," she commanded, her voice low and threatening. "You have four minutes to tell me what you're babbling about and to persuade me that you didn't waste my time with your stupid existential crisis. If it turns out that you have, I'll make you pay. And I'll make sure that your stupid alien gets his dose of it too, because this is his fault as much as is yours. I don't care if only indirectly."

Despite himself, Dib couldn't help swallowing at the threat. Gaz was wearing that dark look on her face, the one that promised Hell on Earth and much worse, so he couldn't have dismissed her warning even if he had wanted to. His eyes touched the timer of the television. Four minutes. He had better manage to catch her interest and fast, or he wouldn't have had to worry about his inner dilemma anymore, because he would have been dead. If his sister hadn't murdered him, Zim would have, for having unleashed the girl's wrath on him too.

"I…Uh…" He stuttered, but then he forced himself to suck in a breath and calm down a bit. Getting worked up wouldn't have got him anywhere. He had promised himself that he would have solved the issue that day, thanks to whatever advice Gaz would have offered him, even if he would have been threatened and insulted in the process, and he was going to get his answer, at any cost. The Irken had made it clear that he would have followed on with his new mission, no matter where Dib chose to stand, and, in that moment, the teen honestly envied the single-minded focus the alien was able to put in his decisions. He wished that he could have just crushed his doubts and insecurities, as the Invader had done, and stuck to a line of action.

"Zim's mission…It's a lie," he started, deciding that he would have told everything he thought relevant, without lingering too much on the details. He didn't want to make Gaz even more pissed than she already was. "He was never sent here to conquer the Earth. Hell, his people didn't even know that Earth existed before he got here. His leaders just wanted to be rid of him and so they sent him away, hoping that he would get lost or die in space or something of the sort."

He noticed that his sister's eyebrow raised a bit at that, but he couldn't interpret the gesture. She didn't look surprised, which was understandable considering that she knew as well as he did how cruel Irkens could be, but there was no trace of mockery or amusement either in her expression. If something, she looked thoughtful.

"Two months and a half ago he…eavesdropped a conversation between his leaders and accidentally found out the truth," he went on, studying the girl's expression carefully, but the next reaction he got was just a scoff as a comment to Zim spying on his Tallest. "That's why he's been so…depressed lately. And that's why he's been seeing that counsellor. And…Uh, apparently, he's a Defective. Which means that his PAK…is all messed up. And him being a crazy moron is because of that. Because a part of him is a faulty, destructive computer who can't stop himself from turning into ashes everything he touches."

He frowned slightly, realising that he hadn't made a good job at explaining what a Defective was. However, he couldn't have done any better. That was, put very poorly, all he knew about Irken Defectives. A shiver ran down his spine, as the words that Zim had spoken in his nightmare echoed in his ears once again. That lack of information looked scarier and scarier the more he considered it. After he had made up his mind and told his nemesis what his decision had been, the first thing he would have done would have been demanding to know if what he had dreamt was a possibility. Without mentioning the visions, of course. He needed the Invader to take him seriously and the other wouldn't have if he had known where his worries had come from.

"I…I went and talked to Ms Xander as you suggested and she told me about this mess. Of course Zim hasn't told her that he's an alien and all, he's sort of told the whole story in this very weird, confusing way. I think she's persuaded that he grew up in a…gang or in cult or something and that he's been ordered around by his leaders since forever. Stuff like that." He shook his head. He still couldn't understand how the counsellor could be so smart and insightful and yet so blind to the most evident facts. "But this isn't important. I understood what Zim told her and…As you know I managed to talk to him, the other day. We…talked."

The words, which had once again started to tumble out from his mouth, uncontrollable, stopped for a moment when he reached that part of the story. They had done so much more than talking. They had connected both in a mental and in a physical way. However, he wasn't going to tell Gaz that they had had a _real_ heart-to-heart talk. Nor that they had made out. _Again_. And, especially, nor that he had found out that he was attracted to Zim. To say the least. Oh no, those were secrets that he would have taken with him to the grave.

"Yeah…Talked. Uh. Anyway." He cleared his throat, stubbornly ignoring the heat that had touched his cheeks. "He…Well, more like his Computer, but these are details too…Uh, he told me the whole story, about the crimes he's accused of and how his Tallest already tried to get rid of him. Apparently, he caused blackouts that lasted _years_ and killed two of the previous Tallest and who know what else." The girl's eyebrow lifted again at that and, for the briefest moment, she almost looked _impressed_. "I…I sort of took his side. I told him that…that he should send them to hell and take control of his life and of himself, since they exiled him. And he… _listened_ to me. Can you believe that? 'Cause I still can't. It was so… _weird_. But, uh, the result was that he has sort of decided that he wants to create his own nation and use Earth as the start and the centre of it. And he asked me to help him conquering the planet so that we could start this…empire thing."

The older teen swallowed, pausing for one more moment. That was the most important part. "I don't know what to do, Gaz. On one hand, you're right, this is ridiculous. I should turn his offer down because I mean…It's _Zim_. Most of what he achieves is destruction, chaos and death. Why should it be different this time? Just because he _wants_ to try something different?" He scoffed, sounding almost incredulous, but his expression turned slightly contrite almost immediately. "But still. _I_ gave him that idea. _I_ told him that he can do it. And…I sort of believe that he might do it, with the right directions." He rubbed the back of his head. "Under all his screeching and naivety and idiocy, he can be competent. You've seen it too. He saved this damned planet a few times, even if it wasn't really what he was aiming for. And some of the things he does…They are actually _amazing_. Not that I'll ever tell him that."

The first dream he had had, while not as shocking as the second one, was still lingering in his mind too. With Zim's advanced technological knowledge and abilities, his own intelligence and Professor Membrane's equipment to supply where the alien's now limited resources failed, they could have built a future similar to what he had dreamt. Maybe not as perfect, as the image of his rival had pointed out, but much better than the present. Besides, it was also true that all he had done in his life had been taking risks in the name of dreams and ideals.

"There's a part of me that knows that I should exploit this situation to make sure that he can't do harm to anyone anymore," he finished, lowering his eyes on his lap. "I mean, he could go crazy, kill me and enslave every world within arm's reach. But, on the other hand…What if there's a chance that he could achieve something _worth_? And not just for himself, but for us all? Who am I to deny him a chance to redemption? I could…make sure that he sticks to his original purpose. I could help him understand what he needs to know about Earth and humans to be the kind of ruler _we_ need. I could…keep him in check, be ready to stop him if he goes too far or if he takes the wrong turn. If I just opposed him, without giving this alliance a try, I might be not just condemning him but also robbing Earth of a real chance to a brighter future."

Gaz remained silent once the torrent of words that had been tumbling out of her brother's mouth had finally ceased. There a had been a few points where Dib had seemed about to get lost into worthless details and she had been ready to attack him, verbally _and_ physically, but he had caught himself each time. And he had respected the time limit she had given him, which had definitely helped her patience. Not to mention that the story he had told her was worth of some interest.

She crossed her arms on her chest, her mind wrapping around the stuttered fragments she had been given and shaping a proper tale out of them. So, apparently, Zim was some sort of badly encoded, genetic mistake. A walking bomb that had already gone off more than once and that not even his idiotic race wanted around. That explained why he was such a moron and why his supposed-to-be leaders didn't give a damn about him, even if the alien hadn't realised it until he had heard it spelled out aloud. She was ready to bet that, at first, he had refused to believe it, even if it would have been obvious to anyone else.

The rest of the information she had received filled in the gaps in the explanation of the Invader's mood switches and sudden change of attitude. Watching everything you had believed in crumbling before your eyes had to be devastating, even for someone who had Zim's training. His existence had been built on basic certainties and now they had been turned into dust, taking down everything he had thought he was. That was one of the reasons why she preferred not giving almost anything, aside from human stupidity, for granted. Considering whom her father was, she would have been a fool to put faith even in the things that most people would have considered sure.

Moreover, being an outcast wasn't easy, especially when it wasn't by choice. She had watched Dib struggling with that truth all their lives, while sitting in his same boat. The difference was that she had decided to stand where she did, away from most of the stupid, irritating world around her, while her sibling had fought in vain to fit in. Zim had literally been confined on another planet, light years away from his people, for the mere reason that he was different. Even if she couldn't really blame the Irkens for not wanting to be imploded.

"This world already sucks, Dib," she stated in the end, moving her gaze away from where she had landed it on her brother. That was another of the very few things she believed to be certain. "We might not be enslaved by some evil alien, but if Zim doesn't destroy Earth today, humans will do it tomorrow. So, if you really think that this thing you two morons want to try has a chance…which I don't believe even for a moment, by the way…You should go for it. If it goes badly, well, we'll be all dead, so no one will care anyway."

Dib blinked at her words. He had almost come to believe that his sister would have simply refused to offer him an answer, perhaps because she thought that his problem was too stupid to deserve one, but instead it had turned out that she had been _thinking_ , while being quiet. And she had actually given him her opinion. A bit brutally, perhaps, but that was the kind of straightforwardness he needed. She also had a point, among the other things, as per usual.

"So, that's…that's it, Gaz? I go for it and who cares if I accidentally help Zim turning our planet in a huge place where everyone is imprisoned, tortured and worked to death?" He couldn't help asking. He couldn't disagree with the girl's words, but they also seemed a bit reductive. "And should I forget the fact that the space scum and I have been fighting each other for four years? Forget all he has done to our planet and to _me_?"

Gaz's head snapped up again and she shot her brother a murderous glare. " _You_ asked for my opinion, moron. I did you a favour and offered it, instead of just sending you to hell and leave you struggling with your idiotic doubts," she spat out, not even trying to hide her growing irritation. If Dib wanted some other kind of advice, then he could go ask someone else. "Besides, it's about time that you two morons stop playing war and get together. You've been playing fast and loose for the last two months. I'm tired of watching your pathetic show."

The older teen almost choked on his breath at the last three statements, his face suddenly growing unbearably hot, his protests forgotten. "G-Gaz!" He exclaimed, not knowing if he was more incredulous or horrified. Did his sister… _know_? Perhaps she had connected the dots after the stunt he had pulled during their last movie night. But then why hadn't she mentioned it before? "That's…That's not true. Zim and I…Getting…together? What's that even supposed to mean?!"

The girl rolled her eyes, exasperated. "How stupid can you be? You're the one who started this dumb conversation about your possible alliance with the space moron and now you ask _me_ what I'm talking about?" She huffed out. Perhaps she should really kick her sibling's skinny ass, to make him pay for being such an idiot.

She opened her mouth to say so, but that was when she took in the other teen's expression and the words got stuck in her throat. One of her eyes opened completely and she stared at her brother's flushed cheeks and half-surprised, half-humiliated expression. He had dropped his gaze, realising that he had misunderstood her words, but she could easily spot the deep embarrassment that had to be filling his amber eyes. His body language screamed mortification and it wasn't hard to guess that he would have rather died than continuing that conversation.

Her own open eyes grew even wider for a moment, as all the pieces clicked in place, before she went back frowning deeply, just as she had after Dib's answer, but for a very different reason. How had she missed _that_ , considering how weirdly the scythe-haired boy had been acting around Zim in the last few days? It was to be said that she hadn't paid too much attention to the two morons, especially when they weren't forcing her to do it, but the older teen had been painfully _obvious_.

" _Of course_ you had to be _gay_ for the _alien_ ," she stated, her voice soaked in irritation. The emotion, however, for once was directed at herself and not at the outside world. She was annoyed for having failed to grasp what had been happening under her nose and also for having let the situation confuse her. It was something that happened rarely and the fact made her even madder. "It's so stupid of me, to be surprised, considering that it's _you_ we're talking about."

The embarrassed horror in Dib's expression deepened as he watched the realisation blossoming on the girl's face and panic joined it when she made her comment, speaking the words he would have never wanted her to say, and with a much worse phrasing than he would have expected. There was no real judging in her voice, not more than the usual at least, and she sounded more enraged for not having realised it sooner than for the thing in itself, but he couldn't help feeling a bit sick at the thought that she _knew_. Her opinion of him had never been high, but he was sure that this new knowledge would have made it even lower.

"Gaz, it's not…" He tried to deny, despite knowing that it would have been useless. The proverbial cat was out of the bag, in all its green, alien glory, and there was no putting it back. However, he had to make an attempt, at least for the sake of what was left of his wrenched dignity.

"Don't you dare to tell me that it's not true and that I got it wrong, Dib," Gaz cut him off as expected, her voice sounding harsher. Her lips curled even more downwards and her frown took a menacing hue. "I might not give a damn about you most of the time, but I'm still your sister. We grew up together, I _know_ you." One more reason why she should have seen it sooner. "And I have eyes to see what's written all over your stupid red face." She let out a disgusted sound. "Now I get why you got so worked up during our movie night. When the space moron said that thing about not needing our pathetic human bonds, you thought that he'd never have some sort of consideration for you, even if it's clearly the _opposite_. And you got all hurt like some brainless, lovestruck girl." She shook her head. "I'm more ashamed than I usually am of being related to you."

The older teen sank his face in his hands. "Dammit, Gaz! Do you really have to make this more humiliating than it already is?" He groaned, wishing that he could just disappear. "I know that I acted like an idiot the other night, okay? No need to pour salt in the wound. Try to see it from my point of view. Zim is supposed to be my nemesis. He tortured me, physically and emotionally, more times than I can count. I've fought him for literal years and I've hated his guts for just as long. I still do. And yet, I…Yet it's not the only thing I feel for him. Half of the time I'm persuaded that this is just the umpteenth symptom of some bad mental illness."

"Your head is messed up and that's no news," the girl stated with a shrug. "Still, this is one more reason why you should stop struggling with yourself and tell Zim yes. This way you won't even have the excuse that he's your enemy. And you know what they say about love and hate, don't you? Two sides of the same coin. Or some similar crap."

"It's a bit more complicated than just that," Dib muttered under his breath. Then he frowned in turn. "And what does my…What does _this_ have to do with my decision? I'm trying to do the best thing for everyone! To take a rational decision, to consider all the pros and the cons. Some…Some stupid, crazy feeling can't have a role in it! And Zim and I aren't even…"

"I know that you aren't, but that's just because of your stupidity. So, get your shit together and leave me be," Gaz interrupted him again. She had been far too patient already and she had no intention to put up with whatever other crap he would have tried to feed her. Or with him denying the obvious. She picked up her console and switched it on. She had done her part, he didn't deserve her undivided attention anymore. "By the way, you know that if you stick with him you might never get any?"

The older teen blinked at her last statement, taken aback by how causal her tone had suddenly become. His mind had stopped at what she had said before, so it took him a moment to understand what she was referring to. When he finally did, after an embarrassing long amount of time, his face flushed red once again.

" _What_!?" He exclaimed appalled, raising his hands. He had never got _that_ far while thinking about Zim. Or anyone else, as a matter of fact. He honestly hoped that his sister didn't think that he had some sort of weird fantasies concerning the alien, because that was the _furthest_ thing ever from his real thoughts. "Gaz, what are you even talking about!? I don't…"

"A couple of weeks ago, while we were gaming, I asked him how his people fuck and stuff," she went on calmly, ignoring completely his reaction and interjection. "I was curious, since before getting here he had no idea of what a kiss was. He made that stupid perplexed face of his and was like "what is fuck?", so I tried with a few other words. He got it only when I used "reproduction" and "mating". He has no idea of how sex works. Not in the practice that happens outside a lab, at least. And once he realised what I was asking him about, he looked like he was about to throw up. So, good luck being a virgin all your life."

Dib gaped at her. He didn't know what had shocked him more, the weird conversation that the girl had had with his nemesis or the fact that she was talking about that kind of subject with the same tone she would have used to tell him about the last time she had gone to the store.

"You asked him…" He started, but was unable to finish the sentence, since he didn't even know where he wanted that question to lead him. "Gaz, you're _thirteen_! Why are you even…"

"I'll turn fourteen in three days," she corrected him with a brief glare. Then she shrugged again and turned her attention back to her game. "They are giving us Sex Ed classes, since the Skool year is almost over and they don't know what else to teach us. That's what gave me the idea of asking. I bet Zim skipped those, last year. Or spent them so absorbed in his idiotic schemes that he didn't hear a word of what was being said. So much for collecting information."

The older teen's eyes widened, as he realised that he had completely forgotten that her birthday was approaching. That meant that they would have probably had a family dinner, assuming that the Professor would have kept his word and been present this year, and that he had to be very, _very_ careful not to miss or ruin it. It would have meant facing a very painful death. Also, he absolutely needed to get her a good present. And with so little notice it would have been an impossible mission. Usually he started to look at least a month before the date, but he had been so busy trying to figure out what the Irken's problem was that it had slipped his mind. He was in deep troubles.

"Speaking of the end of Skool," Gaz went on, clearly not expecting a reply to her words. "In three weeks, the Hi Skool band is having a concert as they always do at the start of every summer." Her fingers were hitting furiously the buttons of her game. Because of her previous loss, she had been forced to restart the level and she wanted to get to the boss as soon as possible. "As their new guitarist, I need to bring someone as audience. So, hurry up and make peace with Zim, because I'm planning to invite you both and I don't want you to ruin everything as per usual."

Dib found himself gaping at her once more. "You're in the Hi Skool band?" He repeated, deciding that it was better to ignore the last part of her speech. "Since when?!" He knew that her sister had learnt how to play the guitar, somewhere along the way, but entering a _band_? That was a completely different story. "I…I didn't know that you were interested in that kind of things."

Gaz didn't even take the time to spare him a glance. "You don't know a lot of things about me, Dib." Her tone had been matter-of-factly, but the words still stung. "Their guitarist broke her hand and they were desperately looking for a replacement. I made an audition during lunch break the other day and I made an impression. They hired me right away." Her frown tightened again. "Don't ruin it for me, or I'll destroy you. Now, you had your advice and warning, so leave me be. You've wasted enough of my time already."

Dib considered talking back for a moment, but in the end he decided against it. Hers had been an order, not a suggestion, and he knew better than trying to disobey. It was a miracle that she hadn't punched him in the face yet. Besides, he had some more thinking to do.

He linked his fingers behind his nape and leant back against the couch, turning his amber eyes on the movie that was still playing on the TV screen. He hadn't honestly known what to anticipate from his conversation with Gaz, but her pushing him to throw caution in the wind and join Zim in his crazy plans was the last thing he would have expected to hear. However, a part of him was glad that she had said what she had, aside from the little unwanted turn their discussion had taken towards the end. In spite of everything, he had been heavily leaning towards that option himself. Her advice was the last push he needed to legitimate that choice.

He let his eyelids fall shut and his head drop back against the edge of the sofa. It was pure _madness_. And perhaps it would have been a choice he would have regretted for the rest of his life. However, Gaz had said something that he couldn't not share. The world turned uglier and uglier with each passing day and humans kept discarding every chance they had at progress in favour of keeping their petty monotonous lives unchanged. It was the reason why most of his father's greatest inventions had never reached the public. They wouldn't have been appreciated. Or they would have been used for war or something of the sort.

His expression shifted in the shadow of a determined frown. A change was needed, before the Earth decided that it had had enough of his kind's crap and committed suicide. Could he trust an alien exile, one who was considered a broken tool by his people, to be that change? Could a being who had known nothing but poisonous destruction for his whole life be a seed for a brighter kind of creation? He had no idea. However, Zim's ambition seemed to be the only workable option in that moment and he didn't want to waste its potential as the too many other occasions had been thrown away. Gaz was right. He should give it a try. As for where that path would have led them all, only time would have told.

* * *

Wow, my updated are getting slower and slower!

I'm so sorry guys, life has got...a bit complicated here and I have once again to apologise for the delay. I have also started my exam session, so I can already tell you that the next chapters will take _at least_ three weeks to be ready. I must confess that I have been slacking a bit on the writing side, but I have very low inspiration and my mood doesn't help! I hope to be able to make up to you with quicker updates in August!

Briefly, about this chapter...I was so glad to have a chance to bring Acelynn back! I know that a lot of you sincerely like her, and I'm planning to keep giving her a role also in the second arc of the story. Here she's just...the usual counsellor who would like not to buy Zim's half truth and confusing explanations, but has to for the sake of helping him out. I created a saint, I know. I don't remember if I mentioned this already, but she was created basing on my own personal experience with therapy. I had bad and good ones, and that helped me create the image of the kind of person I'd like to work with. Competent, capable, smart, but also a bit unconventional (my current therapist sort of fit her profile, I must say). I know that there are a lot of people who had had very bad experiences with therapy and if some of you are reading this, well, don't give. At times it's really just a matter of luck, of finding the right person. But the process in itself works, if you're ready to make it work.  
Uh, sorry for the digression ^^"  
Anyway! Back to my actual role (author of this story). While writing Acelynn again was lovely, I must say that my fave part to write of this chapter was the second scene with Dib&Gaz, especially towards the end xD I really, really love writing Gaz, more than I had anticipated when I started this! She's just that one kick in the butt you need to make up your mind (and it worked very well for Dib here). Which means...next chapter with deal with he and Zim confronting each other about Zim's offer. Who knows how it will go. I accept bets! xD

Enough of my crap. Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone for your support and your patience especially! I can't even start telling you how much it means to me. I hope I will be able to make it up to you at some point! In the meanwhile, I will do my best not to leave you hanging for too long!  
To my reviewers, you guys are seriously the best. Thanks for all your encouragements and kind words and reassurance. They mean the world to me!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcome and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	34. Chapter 34

GIR giggled from where he was floating mid-air, twirling across the living room, not disturbed at all by the alarm that was blaring incredibly loudly in the whole building. On the contrary, the unbearable noise enhanced his amusement, and so did the shocked face of the human who had just stepped inside the base. The way in which Mary had banged his big head against the invisible barrier set a step away from the entrance had been hilarious and it had caused a full belly laugh to escape from the robot's already open mouth.

"Big-Head Boy!" He screamed, launching himself towards the teen and only obtaining to crash against said force field. The collision, however, didn't spoil his mood and he let himself be bounced around, hitting the walls a few times before the momentum wore off.

Dib stared at the SIR Unit, eyes wide, uncertain on whether to cover his ears to protect them from the horrendous noise that had exploded in the eerie building as soon as he had opened the door or to rub his aching forehead. He was used to weird things happening inside Zim's base, but colliding with an energy barrier and watching a _glowing_ GIR rolling in the air wasn't the kind of greeting he had expected to get.

He had slept till late that morning, his exhausted body demanding the rest he hadn't conceded to himself in weeks. For once, his brain, somehow placated by his conversation with Gaz and by the decision he had made, had agreed and allowed him to sleep as much as he really needed to. Not having Skool that day had turned out to be very convenient in that sense too.

When he had opened his eyes, it had been almost midday and, if it hadn't been for that annoying sun ray poking at his face, he would have probably gone on sleeping for another couple of hours. Still, as much as he had temporarily mourned the missed chance to keep resting, it had been for the better. Professor Membrane had made an unannounced appearance while he was getting ready to leave for Zim's and the sight of his parent had brought him a sudden unwelcome wave of guilt. The awareness that he wasn't just putting paranormal over "real science" that time, but that he was choosing an _alien_ over his own kind had hit Dib _hard,_ without a warning. The fact that he was doing it for the sake of mankind hadn't eased the irrational feeling and so he had literally fled the house, ignoring the weird looks that both the man and Gaz had shot him.

"GIR, what…what's going on? And why are you _glowing_?" He asked, shoving those uncomfortable thoughts away and focusing on the present instead. He couldn't be allowed to second guess himself. He had no intention of going back on his decision and the sooner he made it official the better it would have been. However, it seemed that his soon-to-be ally was forcing him to delay that much needed moment. "Where is Zim?"

The robot giggled happily again, but before he could produce any sort of nonsensical answer, a section of the floor opened to let a platform emerge. The Invader was standing on it, arms crossed over his chest, goggles wrapped around the top of his head and working gloves in hand. His left eye was twitching in clear irritation and he was sporting one of the deepest scowls the human had ever seen, antennae pressed flatly against his skull. However, the alien's expression wasn't what caught the teen's attention. His amber eyes instead locked almost immediately on one half of his face, which was covered in large leaking blisters, to the point that his green skin seemed to be _melting_.

"Uh, Zim, are you…?" Dib started to ask, letting his voice trail off because he wasn't sure on how to end the question. His nemesis couldn't fine and he didn't wish to unleash on himself all the pent-up rage he could see in the other's eyes.

"Aw, master! Are you done puking blood?" GIR stepped in, throwing himself on the alien and almost causing them both to fall on the floor. "Did your spooch come out too?"

"Let go of me, GIR!" Zim screeched, letting out a pained hiss when the SIR Unit enthusiastically hugged his face. He grabbed his glowing sidekick by one foot and, after some moments of intense struggle, he managed to detach him. "Stupid bunch of metal! I told you to go and get decontaminated! What are you doing up here?!"

The robot's expression suddenly turned incredibly sad. "But I'm so _glowy_ now! I like it!"

"I don't care, GIR! You're contaminating everything you touch! Computer!" The Irken yelled, his magenta orbs turning towards the mechanical arms that had emerged from the ceiling at his call. "Take care of him!"

"Yes, master!" The artificial voice answered, sounding terribly amused, as the robotic limbs caught a hold of the SIR Unit that was thrown in their direction, dumping him in another hole that had opened in the floor.

GIR's enthusiastic yells echoed from inside the duct as he slid down, his bad mood already forgotten. Zim let out a clicking sound that was most likely a curse and finally turned his attention towards the human who had witnessed the scene from behind the force field.

"Dib-thing. What do you want?" He barked, almost with hostility. "State your purpose and then be gone. Zim is busy."

The teen blinked, caught off guard by the harsh demand, and moved his eyes away from where GIR had disappeared, swallowed by the depths of the base. "Uh, I…" He began to say, without really knowing how to phrase his answer. He hadn't prepared a speech, thinking that it wouldn't have been necessary, and now he was regretting it. Besides, his curiosity was too strong, and so was his growing concern towards whatever his rival was occupied with. A filter for the atmosphere shouldn't have caused your face to melt. "What happened? Why the force field?"

The Invader repeated the clicking sound and his frown deepened. " _Radiations_. My base and my Space Station are filled with deadly, _painful_ radiations of doom!" He exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. "This is all Purple's doing! I asked for a reactor, not for a leaking box of…smelly, radioactive, _rotting_ plasma! He picked up the worst piece of broken tech he could get his claws on and sent it to me! Straight from the _hideous_ depths of deepest dump in the Stratgnohth system! And the agonising _PAIN_!" He lifted a fist towards the ceiling. "Curse you, my Tallest!"

Dib watched the alien as he made his speech, not knowing if he should have laughed or felt bad for Zim. The scene in itself was hilarious, even if now he was very glad for the barrier that separated him, and the rest of the neighbourhood, from the threat of the radiations. Also, under his evident enraged state, his nemesis had to be in a terrible amount of pain, considering how he kept wincing and what GIR had said about him throwing up blood and perhaps even parts of his insides. He knew that Irkens were incredibly resilient and healed easily from wounds that would have been fatal for any Earthen lifeform, but the Invader's state was still a bit worrisome.

"Will you be able to…clean this whole mess up?" He settled to ask in the end, careful to keep his tone as neutral as possible.

Zim dropped his hand and shot him an almost offended look. "Of course I will, worm child! I am _Zim_!" He claimed, with an equal dose of confidence and outrage. "I already fixed all the leaks and purified the plasma. It took me all the night cycle and part of the morning, but the reactor is safe and functional once again. It doesn't give me the surplus of energy I was hoping for, but it's enough to power up the filter." He walked closer to the force field. "And the Computer should have completed the decontamination procedures on the Space Station and started the ones on my base. My PAK will heal me soon enough."

He stopped right in front of the human, one step away from the barrier, and a disquieting smirk opened on his lips. The stretch of the skin made some more liquid drip from the blisters down on his uniform. "You should be _grateful_ , Dib-stink. Zim has been careful enough to prevent even the smallest amount of those hideous radiations from spreading on your planet and in its atmosphere. If I hadn't, by now your weak pathetic body would have been reduced to a pool of disgusting, melted, useless organic material." The sadistic grin widened even more. "Pity. I would have enjoyed the sight of your organ _liquefying_."

Dib felt a small shiver of both disgust and dread running down his spine at the dark expression that his rival was sporting, but he ignored it and instead he leant in, defiantly. "Oh, is that so, alien scum?" He shot back, refusing to show that the other's words had made a certain impression on him. "And what would have you done with my remains, uh? _Drunk_ them? Or something equally disgusting. I wouldn't be surprised, considering that you _harvested_ the organs of the whole student body and swallowed them a few years ago. Mine included."

The Invader scoffed. "Human organs aren't worth to be inside my superior Irken body. Zim would have never done it, if it hadn't been strictly necessary to keep my cover-up," he stated, lifting his chin and making a face. Then the smirk came back. "Even if I have to admit that stealing yours has been particularly _satisfying_."

The teen shook his head. "You're such a _creep_ ," he commented, rolling his eyes. However, there was no real annoyance in his tone. On the contrary, he was almost amused by their little back and forwards. Despite the anger and the suffering, his rival seemed to be in a decent mood. Good, it would have made the conversation easier.

"Anyway. As fun as it is, I didn't come here to watch your face melting," he resumed, straightening up, his expression sobering. He would have preferred being able to speak with Zim without a force field separating them and somewhere more comfortable than the other's doorway, but he didn't want to postpone the talk, so it would have to do. "I…We need to talk. It's about your offer."

The Irken's smirk instantly fell at the last statement and his face turned thoughtful. He would have finally got his answer. Part of him was relieved, because he was tired of having to consider Dib an incognita in his plans, even if it had been just a few days, but, on the other hand, the words caused a hint of nervousness to spark inside him. It was the same insecurity he had felt during his talk with Ms Xander, the uncertainty brought by the awareness that, if the human had refused to work with him, he would have been completely, officially on his own for the first time ever. He had persuaded himself that he would have manage, but that hadn't been enough to soothe the agitation completely.

"Computer, make the environment safe for the Dib," he ordered instead of giving a direct reply, receiving in answer a hum of assent from the machine. He would have given his counsellor's advice a try and show some "positive initiative". Perhaps, if his nemesis saw that he was willing to be cooperative, he would have been more inclined to give him the answer he would have never admitted to want to hear. "Step forwards, Earth monkey. As I said, Zim is busy. We can talk while I work."

Dib made a sceptical face when he was told to advance. His nemesis had just told him that the base was filled with deadly radiations and he wanted to keep his life and his health. However, Zim was already moving back to the platform that had brought him up, taking away from him any chance to protest, so he decided to take a leap of faith and stepped forward. The force field, instead of disappearing to let him pass, caved in and shaped a dome all around him, preventing the radiations to leak out and shielding him from them at the same time. The human's eyes widened in wonder and he ran a hand on the barrier that was now surrounding him, covering even the ground under his feet. That was what the alien had meant when he had told his Computer to "make the environment safe" for him. Clever move.

"Hurry up, Dib-beast. I don't have all day," the Invader commanded, his voice colouring with irritation once again. "I have a tight schedule."

The human didn't need to be told twice and quickly joined his rival on the platform. He hardly had the time to set both feet on it that the portion of floor started to sink down, taking them downwards along an ill-lit conduit at a speed that put Dib's balance at test. It wasn't the usual lift that the Irken used to navigate his base, but one of the shortcuts that led to specific sections of the building.

The tunnel more or less spat them out on the floor of the Invader's transporter room and the only reason why the teen didn't end up plastered on the ground was because he crashed against the force field that was still surrounding him instead. Zim didn't even spare him glance, seemingly unfazed by their abrupt landing, and headed for one of the teleport machines, once again forcing the human to hurry after him.

A blinding laser light enveloped them and, in the blink of an eye, they found themselves in the matching room on the Space Station. The force field surrounding Dib faltered and then faded. Despite himself, the human couldn't help the hitching in his breath when the protective barrier disappeared, but, since he felt no unbearable pain and since his skin didn't start to fall off, he relaxed a bit, deciding to believe what the alien had said about the place having been decontaminated. He licked his lips slightly, glancing around, and wondering what kind of technology had been used to achieve such a thing so quickly, as he fell in step with the Irken. It was the kind of system that mankind needed to use its nuclear energy properly. Maybe it would have gained it, if Zim had been true to his word of wanting to make the planet progress.

"Uh, so, how's it going with the filter?" He found himself asking as they walked, just to break the tense silence that had fallen between them. The Invader still hadn't addressed what he had said about the subject of their conversation and he couldn't help wondering if he should take it as a bad sign. What if the other had had a second thought about his offer? If he didn't want them to work together anymore? Or, worse, if he had decided that, after all, Earth and humans weren't valuable enough to be his fresh start?

Zim hit a button on the panel on the wall, causing the door before them to slide open. "I thought that you had come here to bring me some news," he pointed out, strolling inside the room. "But, if you really want to know, see it for yourself."

His tone had been slightly curt, but Dib almost didn't notice. He hardly heard the words at all, because his attention had been almost completely caught by the sight that the opening door had revealed. Past the threshold there was one of the biggest rooms he had ever seen, rivalled in width and height only by some of the deepest levels of his father's labs. Most of the space was occupied by a giant machine, suspended from the floor and shaped like a weird arc. The highest point was larger and thicker than the two bowed jambs that connected to it and on the top of it there was an additional, spherical section that shone brightly, letting out a green glow. It had to be the reactor Zim had mentioned, the one that was supposed to power the filter, which had to be set in the wider part of the arc. The extremities seemed to end with two huge, currently unmoving turbines, which would have had the task to suck in the dirty air on one side and push out the cleaned one on the other, once the device would have been active.

The human didn't realise that he had walked towards the machine, gaping at it, until he came to stand almost under it and was forced to tilt his head backwards to look at it. The brownish red metal looked as smooth as the one of the skyscrapers of his dream and it slightly reflected the lights that diffusely lit up the room, making sure that no spot was left in the shadows.

"You…You built… _this_ ," he stuttered out, managing, with a big effort, to detach his gaze from the filter and landing it back on Zim, who was still standing near the entrance. "All on your own?"

The Irken shrugged, taking a few steps forwards. "I retrieved the blueprints of the air purification systems my people use to purify the environments in the factories where we build weapons and produce chemicals," he explained, studying the human's expression. Dib had seemed utterly captivated by his work, but he still was unable to tell what that meant. It wasn't the first time that his rival expressed admiration for some of his alien technology, even if usually his reactions were more contained. "I redesigned the filters so that they could fit the kind of substances I need to remove from your filthy atmosphere and then reproduced everything on a larger scale."

His expression shifted into a frown as his magenta orbs settled on the fruit of the work that had taken up all his time in the last few weeks. "The Computer and I had to research alternatives to the materials I couldn't get shipped from the Empire's territories and that slowed us down." Finding replacements for some of the chemicals he had needed had been a messy enterprise, but they had eventually managed to work around it. "It's not finished yet. I'm still running simulations and adjusting the parameters. And I need to install anti-gravity systems to keep it floating at the borders of your disgusting atmosphere. But it should be ready to be installed within the next three Earth weeks." One of his antennae twitched slightly. "It's not as light and efficient as it could have been, but it should do the job."

"Do the job?! You're kidding, aren't you? This is _amazing_ , Zim!" The teen exclaimed, before he could stop himself, all the enthusiasm that had built inside him since when he had first caught sight of the machine pushing the words out of his mouth without his consent.

A rush of embarrassment washed over him as he realised what he had just said, and especially how excited and thrilled he had sounded, and he cleared his throat, glancing away from the alien. He was _really_ impressed by his nemesis's work, but he hadn't meant to make it so evident. Perhaps his mind was already trying to ease itself in the weird prospect that the two of them would have soon stopped being enemies officially, which meant that he could have been more open with his positive opinions too, but that didn't make his sudden show of appreciation less awkward.

"Uh, I mean. You…You were pretty quick. Even with the Computer's help and all," he tried to make amends, completely failing at it. "So, uh…Well done. Yeah."

Zim blinked at the teen, as surprised as the other was by the statements that had firstly escaped his rival's lips. The straightforward, sincerely felt praise had been the last thing he would have expected to hear, even if the awe had been easily readable in Dib's face. He had anticipated a joke, or a veiled compliment at most. The fact that the human hadn't meant to be so direct in his praising didn't really count, not with the proud warmth that had suddenly spread inside his chest.

"Amazing? Is it?" He asked, antennae lifting slightly in both hesitation and a hint of excitement. Then he finally realised that this wasn't the reaction he was supposed to have. Where had all his confidence gone? He should have regained it, now that his existence had a new aim. He shouldn't have been melting at every bit of appreciation he was offered. He should have been able to sustain himself, needing no one to validate him or his work. Instead his stupid organic body still reacted as it had the first time Ms Xander had praised him, after he had found out that he was nothing but an unwanted, broken gear. He had to work harder and get all his old masks back in place. He couldn't afford this kind of weaknesses, if he wanted to become the ruler of an Empire.

He straightened his back and crossed his arms on his chest, lifting his chin. "Of course it's amazing, Dib-thing. _Zim_ made it," he stated, in a much steadier tone. That was more like it. "You foolish creature. Did you have any doubt? No one can match my brilliant brain. Or Irkens' advanced, incomparable technological knowledge."

Dib rolled his eyes at the boasting, even if he could tell that most of it was a façade. He had caught a hint of the same uncertainty Zim had showed when he had confronted the alien about the truth of his situation. He now knew that most of his nemesis's overconfidence was either an act the Invader put on or something he used to shield himself from doubts and scepticism. It was less irritating, seen in that light. And it was something he could relate to.

"My bad, space boy," he shot back, fighting the small grin that was tugging the corner of his lips. He had stopped denying the new balance in his relationship with the Irken in the same moment when he had decided to join him, but he didn't want to lower his guard too much just yet. They still had a long way to go, before figuring how to make that new thing between them work and, despite what Gaz had told him, he didn't want to throw all the caution to the wind. He was ready to make the first step forward, though.

"Aside from that. About your offer, uh…" He began again, fisting his hands in the cloth of his trench coat. Why was it so hard? It hadn't been when he had pictured the scene in his head. "I came here to tell you…Damn, I never thought that I'd say this, not even in my wildest dreams, but I thought about it a lot and…Fine. Let's do it, Zim. Let's conquer the Earth and build that Empire."

He made a face. Saying that he had sounded terribly _lame_ was an understatement. The Irken would have never taken him seriously if he hadn't managed to put more strength in his words. Especially considering that the next part of his speech was the most important. He needed to show the other that he intended to stand his ground and that he wouldn't have given it up for any reason.

"I'll help you with this madness," he resumed, forcing himself to underline the determination in his voice and to seek the alien's magenta orbs. "But I'm _not_ doing it out of altruism. I'm _not_ doing it for _you_. The fact is that Earth isn't going anywhere and humans clearly can't manage themselves. So this…This a _big_ chance, for me and my race too. _But_ I have terms, space boy, and I won't compromise on them. So, if you want me to work with you, you'll have to meet my conditions."

Zim found himself blinking at the human once again and it took him all his self-control not to openly gape at his rival as the latter spoke. Or rather, at his _former_ rival, considering that the teen had just accepted his offer. His brain stuttered a bit at the realisation and his PAK buzzed slightly, expressing the same confusion he was feeling. He had thought about the possibility that Dib could choose to stand by him, he had been _wishing_ for it, but, now that it was happening, he didn't know how to react. It was as if all his efforts to prepare for whatever answer he would have got had been worth nothing. He would have probably felt less unsettled if the answer had been "no".

The Irken opened his mouth, but nothing came out of it, even if is head was a hive of buzzing thoughts. Him and the Dib, his eternal arch _enemy_ , the thing that had constantly been standing between him and his success, the being who had opposed him since day one. The two of them on the _same_ side, not for a temporary, forced cooperation, but for a stable _alliance_. Him and his _nemesis_ conquering that ball of dirty. _Together_. It was more than his mind and PAK could take and he didn't know what to do with the fresh, bright energy that had suddenly filled him. What was that elating feeling, so strong and sparkling that made it hard for him to stay still? And why did it taste so much, so sweetly like _victory_?

"You just accepted me as your future overlord and you have _terms_?" Was what he eventually spat out, sounding outraged. That was the only part of his nemesis's words to which he knew perfectly how to react to, so he laced on it. He would have dealt with the rest later, when he would have been alone again. Or perhaps he would have just been able to ignore and forget about his weird reaction. "It will be _Zim_ 's Empire! You'll be getting benefits for your dumb people, not sharing my crown! How do you dare to make demands?! Are you trying to deceive me already, _human_? Is your acceptance just a filthy trick?!"

Dib felt a new spark of exasperated irritation at the alien's words. There it came, the reluctance he had anticipated. Of course Zim would have fought him, even before he had stated his terms, he hadn't expected anything less. He had the feeling that, enemies or allies, they would have always had a hard time at finding an agreement. There were plenty of harsh fights ahead of them, battles that would have surely put at test the fragile balance of their alliance. The current one was just the first and he had no intentions of caving in. He wasn't going to begin that collaboration with a defeat. It was his turn to start cashing victories in. The space moron would have accepted to work by his rules or else… _No_. There would be no "else" this time. They would have figured it out and learnt to deal with the consequences of their choices. He didn't care if he had to spend the next month battling the Invader on the matter. This was a match he refused to lose.

"Yes, I dare to have terms. I have all the rights to have terms. It's _my_ home planet we're talking about and I _know_ you, Zim. I can't let you have free rein on this," he talked back, raising his voice in turn, but keeping his tone as calm as he could. He didn't want the discussion to turn into a full fight so soon. "I don't demand to be your equal, even if I think that I do deserve that position, but I will _not_ be your slave. Or your minion. I'll work _with_ you, not for you. I haven't spent four years of my life battling you and having my existence ruined by you just to end up letting you boss me around. That will _not_ happen. And if that was your plan, well, either your revise it or we'll be standing on opposite sides once again."

He made a small pause to let the brief fraction of silence underlining his words, but not long enough to allow the Irken to cut in. That was the main point and, if Zim had accepted it, then they would have been able to work around everything else. He just hoped that the Invader wouldn't have got mad and decided to go back to his "Irkens need no one" motto and kick him out before they could fully discuss the subject. Finding a deal would have become much harder if that had happened.

"I want to be informed on every aspect of your plans and intentions, down to the smallest detail, and I want full veto power on the most important decisions," he went on, feeling the determination growing in his own voice at every word, wiping away all the doubts. He realised that he had a clear view of what he wanted that alliance to be, clearer than he had thought, and talking suddenly became much easier. "I also want access to _all_ your systems, databases and technology. In exchange, I'll share with you whatever you'd like me to share, even the access to my father's laboratories." That was something he hoped would have appealed the Invader. Zim would have soon been cut off from the Empire's resources, once his banishment would have become official, and the Membrane labs were an easily accessible source to a technology that, while not as advanced as the Irken one, should have been sufficient to allow them to produce what they would have needed.

"And I need us to be _honest_ with each other, Zim," he finished, lowering his voice a bit. "No more going around each other's back. No more secret plans. I don't trust you, not yet, as I know that you don't trust me. It would be crazy, considering where we're coming from. I've spent years ruining your life mission, and I'm sure that you resent me for that and for all the humiliation and the pain I inflicted you. You've hurt me more than anyone else. I haven't forgiven you any of it and you'll have to make it up to me, at some point." Zim was the protagonist of most of his bad memories and nightmares. However, at the same time, he was also the first and only thing that had given his life some purpose. "But…We'll go nowhere if we spend all our time second guessing each other's intentions." He licked his lips slightly. It was time for the last bit, the one thing he needed to know to confirm that he wasn't making the worst mistake of his life. "And, speaking of honesty, there's something I absolutely need to know about Irken Defectives. Your answer will determine how this…alliance will go, so keep that in mind before you decide to lie or omit information."

This time, Zim openly gaped at the stream of words and demands that left Dib's mouth, appalled. The first part of the human's speech hadn't surprised him much. He had expected his former enemy to underline that he would have been his _ally_ and not his servant. The idea of treating a human almost as equal still disturbed him, but it was also true that Dib wasn't a random human. He could have learnt to co-exist with that, given some time. After all, that was the reason why he had asked Ms Xander to teach him the dynamics of real team work.

What had horrified him had been what had come next. He should give the worm child access to all his technology and systems? How could the Earth monkey demand such a thing from him?! Dib had talked about honesty and starting to build the basics for a trust and had even promised him unlimited access to his father unit's equipment, which was something he would have needed in the near future, but could he really risk exposing himself so much? What if it was truly just an elaborated trick? It would have meant being captured, caged, experimented on and finally killed off through vivisection. He would have had more chances working on his own that considered.

He balled his fists and stared hard at the human. The last bit about the other having a question about his Defective status seemed too a clumsy attempt to gain sensible information, but what was keeping him from giving completely into the paranoia and kick the teen out of his base was the look on his former rival's face. Dib was as tense as he was and his eyes shone, hard and determined, but he could also see a hint of uncertain nervousness twirling in those amber orbs. And then there was the way in which his fingers clenched and unclenched slightly, betraying what the alien chose to read as anxiety. Not to mention the _hopeful_ glimpse in his expression.

Zim tilted his head on one side. The human had tried, and at times succeeded, to deceive him in the past, but he had never worn that almost _vulnerable_ stance in those occasions. The few times he had seen it had been when Dib had come to him asking for _assistance_ instead. His PAK buzzed slightly again, as new wave of confusion and indecision spread inside him. The truth was that, while he was honestly incredulous for the demands he had been made, he knew that they were reasonable, considering his situation. He was projecting on the teen his inner conflict, torn between seeking a reason to turn down the offer he himself had made and wanting to hand Dib whatever his former rival wanted, as long as the other accepted to work with him. He felt both humiliated and lost and he almost longed for the utter confidence that the spice-induced, disgusting warmth had given him when he had first his proposal. He had been so persuaded that it was the right thing to ask, the right thing to _obtain_ , but now he couldn't be that sure anymore.

"Why should I expose myself to you? Reveal all my weaknesses and give out all my secrets? Without having the certainty that you won't use them against me?" He accused in the end, after almost a whole minute of silence. "You said it yourself, Dib-beast. I cannot trust you. We have always been enemies. And, while we might have been living some sort of…truce," he made a face at the word, "it's no guarantee that our war is over. This could be still you trying to deceive me, exploiting my current, uncertain situation. How can I comply to your requests, knowing this?"

Dib brought a hand to his face at those words, rubbing his temple. Damned Irken paranoia. That was another objection he had come to expect, even if he had hoped that the way they had interacted in the last few weeks might have pushed Zim to be less suspicious. The worst part, and the most frustrating, was that he couldn't deny the Invader's words. If he had chosen to, he could have come up with such a plan. He could have used the alien's weakness to trick him with the aim of destroying him once and for all. He himself had thought that his nemesis might be doing something of the sort when, at the very start of that mess, the other had been under the effect of the radiations. It was a reasonable doubt and he had no way to show Zim that it wasn't the case, not if he wasn't given a chance to prove the honesty of his intentions. However, conceding that chance would have meant for the Irken to expose himself and they would have been back at square one, in a cycle that would have endless repeated itself. It was time to be a bit more aggressive with his tactics.

"It's true, you've no way to know if I'm lying or not," he started, making sure that his voice was strong and determined. He couldn't afford any doubts, not with the alien having enough for the two of them. "You can't know for sure that this isn't just a trick. I could swear it to you a thousand times, but it wouldn't matter because you don't trust my word. It will take time for me to show you that I'm not trying to deceive you, but you must make this decision _now_ , even if you can't know if it's the right thing to do. Just as I can't. But maybe it's time for you to face the truth, Zim."

He took a step forward, closing a bit the distance that still separated them. He felt torn over what he was about to say. There was a part of him that was eager to speak those words, childish cruel amusement bubbling in his chest at the thought of rubbing the Irken's own vulnerability in his face. He wanted his revenge for the too many times he had been shoved down in the dirt and left there bleeding, literally and metaphorically, his payback for all the traumas he had been forced to endure. However, at the same time, he disliked the idea of doing such thing, because it might have undermined the already precarious balance of their current situation and because it made him feel like a hypocrite. He and Zim had been horrible to each other in the past, but now he was trying to build something good from the smoking ruins that their rivalry had left behind. It just felt _wrong_ to act as if there was still nothing but bitter hatred between them.

He clenched his fists a bit. Whether he would have enjoyed it or not, it had to be done. It was the only way to force Zim to agree with his terms. In the aftermath, hopefully, the alien would have understood that it was the best choice for them both. And if the Irken hadn't, then Dib would have been ready to face his vengeance. The thought almost made him grin, in spite of everything. That was how things had always been between them. He doubted that working together would have changed it.

"The truth is that you _need_ me, Zim," he resumed, trying to keep a straight face, despite the shadow of the smirk that was already threatening to curl his lips. "As soon as your Tallest will have broken the news to you, you'll be on your own. No more easily accessible tech, no more alien food, no more back up, no more intel. Plus, if I don't work with you, I'll be working _against_ you, and you'll never conquer this planet. This is a promise. And you'll have nowhere to go either, nowhere to hide." He narrowed his eyes. "It might be true that you have…defeated me plenty of times in the last two months, but do you realise how many chances I had to expose you? To destroy what's left of your existence? I had plenty of them, but I chose not to exploit them, even if I've been _very_ tempted to. You owed it to me if you're still free and alive, space boy."

He noticed how Zim's face contorted, but he didn't give the Invader a chance to interrupt him and went on, opening his arms. "Like right now. You let me inside you base, on your Station, without even searching me for spying devices. And this is hardly the first time it happens." He shook his head. "You might be reluctant to trust me, but the truth is that you're already doing it to an extent, because deep down you know that you have no other choice. Maybe you can manage survival on your own, but you need me to achieve your goal. To complete your dear mission. And the sooner you accept that fact, the sooner we can start working on your plans."

His expression softened a bit at this point and he carefully reached out for the Irken's shoulder. "Listen, I can understand that his must…suck for you. You have no idea of how much I hated it every time I had to come and ask for your help. But this doesn't have to be like the times when we've been _forced_ to work together, also because it wouldn't work out on the long-term. We can make it different, somehow. We can figure it out. But you must work with me, Zim. Even if you don't like it right now." He allowed himself a small smirk. "Besides, I'm _taller_ than you, and that should win me some respect on principle, shouldn't it?"

Zim let out an outraged sound at Dib's last sentence and took a step backwards, forcing the human to drop the hand he had rested on his shoulder. "You might be taller than me, but you are _human_ , worm child. That makes you _inferior_ on principle," he shot back, with a deep scowl, but then he dropped his eyes. "And I should send you back to my base, _without_ a protective force field, and let you die a horrible death for the arrogance you have just showed."

He crossed his arms on his chest and turned on his heels, moving slightly away from his nemesis. He hated to admit it, but his former rival had a point. He wished he could have denied it, but he couldn't. He _needed_ Dib. He needed the technology the human could procure him and the shelter he could have offered in case of need. His chances of success would have been drastically reduced, if the other had opposed him, that was true too. And if he couldn't have fulfilled that new mission he had given himself, then his whole life would have stopped making sense once again. The mere thought sent unpleasant shivers down his spine. He didn't want to be swallowed up by that sense of emptiness once again. He was sure that it would have destroyed him, this time.

His magenta eyes slid closed for a moment. That wasn't all, though. The human had spoken another, painfully humiliating truth. Whether he liked to admit it or not, he did have let his guard down around his nemesis in plenty of occasions. Even in that moment, he was giving him his back, while he was lost in his thoughts. If Dib had wanted, he could have easily attacked him, captured him, and he wouldn't have seen it coming. It wasn't a behaviour he had planned, an act he had schemed carefully. He had simply got used at being that careless around the teen when they weren't battling and now it came almost instinctive to him. He had laced on the only stable pillar that had remained in his life after all his other certainties had been turned into dust. It hadn't even been his decision. It was a fact that had been forced on him, as everything else.

The Invader clenched his fists. Now, however, he had a choice. He could have gone on denying, coaxing himself into yet another delusion, fully conscious this time, and live it till it would have eventually crumbled before his eyes as the first had or he could have made the best out of a bad situation and taken as much control as he could over his _real_ existence. Even if said life meant having to compromise with a human, with the being who had been the ruin of so many of his plans and efforts in the past. The enemy he had more or less willingly chosen to keep around for whole Earthen years and who meant to him much more than his mind could comprehend. All that considered, perhaps that alliance, the one _he_ himself had proposed, was just the natural consequence of everything that had happened between them, before and after his discovery. Was that enough to fight his doubts? Most likely it wasn't, but it was enough to make him see that Dib was right when he had implied that he didn't have a better alternative. The human was his best chance.

Zim gave himself a moment to allow that knowledge to sink in fully. It wasn't a painless process, but eventually he managed to force the idea down as he would have done with a poisoned morsel he had consciously decided to swallow, fighting the reluctance of his mind as he would have fought the instinctive, protective need to throw up.

His inner struggled fuelled his still lingering paranoia, but he managed to steady his control over the traitorous thoughts as he turned around and found Dib standing where he had left him, wearing the same determined and anxious expression he had been sporting when he had first offered him his terms. The emotions on his former rival's face seemed to be honest as he claimed that his words were. Perhaps it was time to follow another of Ms Xander's suggestions and "take a leap in the dark". Besides, for better or worth, Dib was still and would have always been his _nemesis_. There was no one else more appropriated to be at his side, no one else he would have allowed to stand by him.

"Zim still thinks that your filthy terms are unacceptable…Or rather, that they would be if the circumstances had been even just slightly different," he stated in a sharp, hard tone as he quickly covered the distance he had put between them, stopping less than a step away from his nemesis. His magenta orbs sunk back in the human's amber ones and he stabbed one of his close in the tender flesh of the other's throat, smirking slightly at the wince he got as a reaction. "You will get your deal, Earth monkey. But never doubt one thing." His voice lowered and he pushed himself on his tiptoes, leaning in at the same time as his eyes narrowed. "If this is a nothing but a filthy trick to take me to my doom, I will make sure that you fall down with me, Dib. _That_ is what I promise you."

Dib swallowed slightly at how threatening the alien looked for a moment, but he resisted the instinct to take a step back. "Oh, I have no doubts that you will, Zim," he answered with a small, smug smirk, not losing a beat and bowing slightly downwards. "Assuming that you'll manage. I'm not easy to take down, you know?"

A creepy, sly grin opened on Zim's face at the provocation. "Oh, really?" He scoffed and, before the human could even start to react, one of his PAK legs shot out, wrapping itself around the teen's ankle and forcefully removing his feet from the floor.

Dib let out a startled yelp, which amused the Invader for a second, but what the alien hadn't expected had been for his former rival to instinctively reach out for him, as soon as he felt himself falling down. The result was that, a moment later, they both ended up rolling on the smooth floor of the Station. Zim emitted a half surprised, half enraged hiss and he instantly pushed himself in a seated position, clearly displeased that his little trick had been turned against him, while Dib remained where he was, lying on his back as his mind wrapped around what had just happened.

" _That_ was a low blow, space boy. But I guess that you have a point," the human eventually said, breaking the brief silence that had fallen on them. The mocking smirk he had been wearing had turned into an amused, less sharp grin and he turned his head to be able to glance up at the alien, raising a hand to straighten his glasses. "We're indeed destined to fall down together."

"Cease your foolishness, worm child," the Irken grumbled, clearly not sharing his hilarity, but deep down he had to admit that, as irritating as it was, there was a weird symbolism in the ridiculous scene they had just staged. "Didn't you have a question for Zim instead?"

Dib's expression sobered up at the inquiry and he sat up in turn, allowing a small sigh to escape his lips. All of a sudden he wasn't eager anymore to hear the reply to his doubts. Zim had accepted his terms, which was pretty much a miracle, and now he feared that his achievement would have been ruined by the knowledge that his nightmare could become a reality. However, he knew that, without that answer, none of what they were planning to achieve could have happened. And he also couldn't have allowed himself to enjoy the elated feeling that was starting to bubble in his chest.

He looked away for a moment, feeling a hint of gleeful heat suddenly rushing to his face. He had known, rationally, where the conclusion of that discussion would have led him, but now that it was real, now that he and the Irken were officially together in the chase of that insane utopia, his emotional side seemed to have caught up with the implications. He had never felt so terrified and excited at the same time. The full awareness hit like a shock of victorious energy, shaking him down to the core. He had to have truly gone mad, because there was no other explanation to why partnering him with _Zim_ was making him so dreadfully _happy_ , but he couldn't give a damn about it. He just wanted the feeling to last and to produce the bright results he dreamt of.

"You told me that most Defective are crazy. Uncontrollable loose cannons," he started, biting the inner side of his cheek and moving his eyes back on the Invader. He swallowed, feeling suddenly nervous. "You're…well, out of it already, but…Is there the chance that you might go, you know, _crazier_? Like…" What had the Zim in his nightmare said? "Could the corrupted part of your coding expand, infect the rest and just degrade everything? Like some sort of computer virus?"

The alien squinted as his former rival, narrowing one eye in a mixture of surprise and incredulity. "Dib-stink, where did your smelly big head find these ridiculous ideas?!" He asked, sounding almost offended. "Zim isn't one of your stupid, primitive, slow, filthy machines! Irkens tech can't be damaged _that_ easily. PAKs especially." He scoffed, but he dropped his eyes in turn. "However…It's not completely impossible. Usually Defectives are terminated before such a thing can happen but…I can suppose that a failure of the system that might facilitate the degrading of the still undamaged code could happen, if a PAK is damaged and not properly repaired. Or if the Irken who has it is subjected to very high levels of stress, abrupt changes and difficult situations that might force them to go against their coding and mindset."

"Like finding out that they're a Defective, being humiliated and banished on an alien planet? And maybe forced to turn their worst enemy into an ally?" Dib hazarded to ask. His tone was careful, but his amber eyes were fixed on Zim's face, attentively studying every shift of his expression. The Invader scowled at his words, but he caught a flash of deep uneasiness in his magenta orbs and that was enough to answer him. "Zim…"

"I will _not_ go mad, Dib," the Irken cut him off before he could even start formulating this question. "I have no idea of who or what shoved this absurd idea in your head, but it will not happen. I have no intention of letting my status stand in my away. _Again_. So stop worrying about it. It doesn't concern you anyway."

It was the human's turn to frown. The alien's words weren't very reassuring, despite the strength with which they had been spoken. "Oh, like hell it doesn't concern me!" He shot back, shoulders tensing. He had no intentions of letting the matter go so easily. He couldn't, not when _everything_ was at stake. "It does, Zim! Because if you go mad, my planet and I will be the first to pay for it. And I can't let that happen." He gritted his fists for a moment, trying to calm himself down. They couldn't get in a fight, not while discussing something so _vital_. "Is there…Is there a way to prevent it? To make sure it doesn't happen? Like putting some sort of firewall around the broken code?"

The scowl on the Invader's face deepened. "Are you implying that I should get my hands inside my PAK? And maybe even let _you_ do that?!" He hissed, his voice dripping animosity. His stance had turned openly hostile once again. Did the human really think that he would have agreed to such a thing? It would have been madness already if he himself had touched his coding. Thinking about allowing someone else who weren't the Control Brain or an authorised Irken medic to do was unthinkable. "Would you allow me to stick my claws in that meaty brain of yours?!"

Dib had understood that he had said something very stupid as soon as he had seen the way in which the alien had tensed. He couldn't help swallowing slightly once again, under the piercing pressure of those magenta orbs. He knew that he would have had to choose his next words carefully, because his nemesis was clearly on the verge of lashing out.

"Honestly? If I had an illness…or any other sort of problem that threatens to kill me or…or to turn me into something I don't want to be, and if no one else could help me with it, then yeah," he replied, slowly, his eyes never leaving Zim. His muscles had tensed, ready to spring into action, if the Irken had chose to attack him. "Yes. I'd come to you for help, even if it means letting you mess with my brain. You couldn't do to me anything worse than that hypothetical disease would anyway."

He licked his lips, as he watched his former enemy turning thoughtful. He hadn't lied. If his nemesis had been his only choice, he would have gone to him and hoped to be offered some assistance. And if it had happened now that they were supposed to be allies, he might have gone to him even while having other feasible alternatives. Of course, only after having given the idea _a lot_ of thinking.

Zim eyed the human carefully, taking in the other's nervousness not without a hint of sadistic pleasure. He liked to see that he could still make Dib uneasy with the right kind of glances, even now that they had officially more or less ceased their hostilities. His body relaxed slightly and he turned his head away from the teen, lifting his chin.

"If it will ever turn out to be necessary, the Computer could help me programming some sort of…barrier to contain the corrupted code," he offered, even if he didn't even try to hide the harsh dislike he had for the idea. He shot the teen a side glance. "You have showed a decent level of understanding of my superior technology, with your past hacking attempts. Of course, they have all failed for the most but…" The glance turned into a defiant glare. "Your father unit's technology and your abilities _might_ turn out to be of assistance, in the case such a necessity arises."

Dib simply nodded, biting back the words that had come to his lips. He was aware that this hypothetical concession was the best he would have got, at least for the moment. Hopefully, once he and Zim had figured out how to work together, the Irken would have become more open to listen to him. For now, he would have to do with the reassurance that his nightmare could be prevented, even if through very unorthodox methods. After all, rules had never been something the two of them had religiously followed.

Instead of replying he finally decided that it was time to stand up from the floor and, once he was on his feet, he held out his hand for the Irken to take. Zim hesitated for a split second, but he eventually accepted it, allowing the teen to pull him up in turn. Dib watched as his nemesis brushed and straightened his uniform, before raising a hand, gesturing him to follow.

"Since you're here and since you need to prove yourself worth of being Zim's…second-in-command, you must make yourself useful, Dib-thing," the Invader stated in a commanding tone, heading towards the other side of the room, where some computer consoles were set. "You will assist me in running the next sets of simulation for the filter."

The human nodded, feeling a renewed spark of that same excitement he had experienced when Zim had firstly accepted his terms, and hid a small victorious smirk. Second-in-command. It wasn't bad, as a title. It reminded him a lot of his first dream.

"Uh, Zim, since we've talked about sharing tech and information…" He resumed, as a new thought hit him. "Is there another gaming planet like the one you sent Gaz on that one time you were trying to scare me?"

The Irken turned to eye him carefully. "What do you need it for? You aren't planning to play some other scary trick on me, are you, worm child?"

"No, no! I think that experience was…enough. For us both. Just, it's Gaz's birthday in two days and I don't have a present for her yet. We could…make it a shared gift." His lips curled into a new, sly grin. "Since you and she spend so much time together, she's most likely expecting a gift from you too…And you don't want to make her angry, do you?"

Zim's antennae perked up as his face contorted in horror. "Why didn't you inform me of this necessity?! I had no idea that the scary beast's day of birth was approaching!"

"So, will you give me this information? And lend her your Cruiser again?"

"… _Fine._ But I'm doing it just for my own sake, and not for you, Dib-pig."

Dib snickered at his new ally's evident uneasiness. "Of course, space boy. Of course."

* * *

Hello guys!

Nope, I'm not dead ^^" I want to apologise for taking this long. It was totally unplanned, I swear, but the last month has been...crazy. Plus, when I finally got some free time at the start of this week, the charger of my laptop decided to die on me and so I was left without a computer for days...which meant no updating even if the chapter was ready. As a consolation prize, and an apology, I can tell you that the next chapter is almost written and I'll be posting it in about three days! If nothing goes wrong again =.=

So, I hope the chapter was worth the wait! At leads it came out super long, so you guys will have a bit to read ^^" I'm almost satisfied with how the confrontation turned out, even if obviously there are still a few things that need to be smoothed out. And they will be, but with time!

Again, I'm so so sorry for the endless wait! And i also apologise for not having replied to tons of reviews. Still, know that I read each of them right away every time I get the notification and they always help my day. And for that I'm very grateful, also because So, considering how patient you all have been, a very he artful thank you to everyone. I'll try to be more coherent with the updates, but I really can't promise anything with how hectic life has been *sigh*  
Also a warm, virtual hug to all my reviewers! You guys mean the world to me. Honestly, lately I keep writing just thanks to your never ending support since my inspiration tend to slack for several reasons. So, thank you for allowing me to keep on following this small journey!


	35. Chapter 35

"Dammit…"

Dib winced, rubbing a cotton ball over the fresh gash that adorned his cheekbone. The cut was pretty deep and the disinfectant he was using to clean it stung badly. Moreover, the absence of a proper mirror made it hard for him to rub off all the blood that was still coming out of the wound. He would have rather grab his things and go back home, but Zim hadn't given him the codes to freely move around the base yet and he had no intention to ask his former rival to activate the teleport. After all, he had the Irken's claws to thank for the damage his face was sporting and he wouldn't have put it past the Invader to play a nasty prank on him, especially if the other was still irritated. So, he was stuck on the Space Station till further notice, using a turned off display as a mirror.

The teen let out a deep, exasperated sigh. He had thought that there could be nothing worse than constantly fighting Zim and his crazy schemes to defend Earth from an alien invasion, but he had been wrong. Working with the Irken, he had discovered, could be even harder than opposing him, under some points of view. And it was, among the other things, much more _frustrating_. At least, in the role of the enemy, he had always been filled with an intense satisfaction every time he managed to defeat the Invader. Now that they were, _supposedly_ , on the same side, instead, even that pleasure had been taken away from him. He still felt a spark of victorious contentment whenever he won an argument, but he wasn't allowed to fully enjoy it anymore because he couldn't ignore the fact that they had just wasted at least an hour in a dispute that could have easily been avoided. All because Zim seemed to _despise_ the mere idea of agreeing with him, no matter if they were discussing the latest simulation for the filter or one of GIR's shenanigans.

The human threw the stained piece of cotton on the floor, knowing that the Computer would have retrieved it and dumped it in the closest incinerator. Only three days had passed since he had presented his answer and terms to the Irken and he was already exhausted. He wished he could have said that at least now he was being spared the injuries and the bruises, but it wouldn't have been true, since five of their quarrels had turned into physical fights, the latest of which had ended less than half an hour before and gifted him that nasty gash. Zim now limited his use of his PAK and lethal weapons when they clashed, but that didn't mean that he was less ruthless.

Carefully, Dib brushed his fingers over the cut, rolling his eyes when he found fresh blood on his skin. He had expected the difficulties, especially at first. After all, there was no way that they could have just left behind _years_ of harsh rivalry and hatred, especially considering that the latter feeling was still there and ready to come forward at the smallest pretext. However, he hadn't anticipated that his nemesis would have been so _uncooperative_. Most of the times, the alien really seemed to be thrashing all his attempts to be civil just on principle.

He had to admit that not everything was horrible, though, or he would have already quitted, despite all his good resolutions and dreams. There had been moments in which he and Zim had been almost…comfortable around each other, working quietly side by side on the giant structure of the filter or bowed over the same display, editing blueprints and recalibrating sensors. Dib had found himself fascinated both by how agile and elegant the Irken's hands were when they moved, skipping quickly over virtual and material keyboards or handling whatever odd alien tools he was using, and by how contorted his former rival's reasonings were. He had listened plenty of times to the tales of his schemes, but now that he had had the chance to see how they were born, he found himself forced to acknowledge that there was a spark of insane genius too, under the apparent idiocy.

He allowed himself a small grin. Despite the yelling sessions and the brawls, the frustration and the bursts of anger, the continuous disagreements and the insults, despite all he still had to put up with, working with Zim, aiming to build a world that could be better and beautiful, was exhilarating in a way that very few things in his life, aside from his battle with said alien, had been. No matter how tired and drained he might feel at times, the certainty that he would have eventually come to feel fulfilled by his choice already seemed to grow stronger and stronger with every obstacle and divergence that they, somehow, managed to overcome.

"Have you finally got lost inside that gargantuan head of yours, Dib-beast?" A mocking voice cut through his thoughts, making him start.

The grin instantly fell from Dib's face and he whipped around to face his brand new, unlikely ally, straightening his back. Zim was leaning against the now open door of the small control room, arms crossed over his chest and a weird, short, thick metallic stick firmly held in his right hand. There was a slightly lopsided grin on his face, which told the human that most of the anger that had pushed the Invader to slash his face had already faded. The knowledge reassured him a bit. He really didn't want to end up in another brawl, not so soon.

"I was trying to fix the mess you did, alien scum," he shot back, with a hint of irritation, pointing the cut. "But you don't have any kind of medical supply I can use here and I didn't think that I'd need to bring _stitches_ with me too, this morning."

The Irken muttered out a few sounds in his mother language, words that the teen chose to interpret as insults, and detached himself from the jamb, marching purposefully towards him. "You asked for it, foolish creature!" He scoffed, stopping in front of the human and reaching out to grab the collar of his T-shirt. "You _dared_ to criticise my amazing skills!"

"Your calculations were _wrong_!" The human pointed out, exasperated. "You should have thanked me for noticing, since I probably spared us hours and hours of reviewing codes! But you really can't even admit the smallest mista– _Hey_!"

He couldn't finish the sentence because the Irken pulled him downwards, the fingers that had been holding his coat moving to grab his face instead. The claws stung the flesh of his cheeks, but without breaking the skin, despite how firm the alien's grip was.

"Hold still, Earth monkey," Zim ordered in a commanding tone and then proceeded to rub the weird stick over the cut. An odd green glow came out of the extremity that was being held against the teen's skin and it seemed to emit a certain amount of warmth too. "There. All done."

Dib straightened as soon as he was released, bringing a hand to where the wound was supposed to be. Even if the Invader had clearly been putting more pressure than it was needed on his cheekbone, it oddly hadn't hurt as much as he would have expected and his eyes widened slightly when his fingertips found no trace of the gash. "What…?"

"It's a dermal regenerator, you ignorant pig. Your filthy kind can just dream to possess this kind of marvels," the Irken boasted, waving the device under his former rival's nose. "Technically, it's Vortian technology, since my people, in their superiority, don't need medical attention for mere flesh wounds, but…It can turn out to be useful. Now be thankful and stop your nonsense about the mighty Zim making _mistakes_." He then eyed the other attentively. "Do you have any other wound your weak body can't handle?"

"Why should I be thankful when I have all these bruises and scars because of _you_?!" Dib complained, even if he was staring at the device with great interest. His father had been working on a similar project a couple of years before, but his prototypes had never been so efficient. He would have loved to open it up and study the mechanism. "Never mind." He rolled his eyes. No need to prolong that discussion. "But I could use that to heal a few other things. Like that damned bitemark you gave me yesterday. I don't want a scar that matches your stupid dental records on my arm."

The Invader's expression turned outraged. " _LIES_! Filthy, utter lies!" He exclaimed in a screech, pointing one of the claws of his free hand towards the human's chest. "Zim did not do such a thing as biting your stinky, meaty human meat!"

"You didn't, space boy?" The teen taunted, reaching out to lift the left sleeve of his trench coat. On his forearm there was an angry mark, still red and swollen despite how attentively he had treated it the night before. It had taken him forever to make it stop bleeding. If one had cared to check, they would have found that the borders matched his nemesis's teeth perfectly. "Then what is _this_?"

The previous day he had found himself forced to snatch away the welder that the alien had been using, to prevent him from creating a hole in the hull of the filter. Zim had got distracted by GIR messing up with one of the computers and had turned to yell at the robot, forgetting about the still working laser. Dib had just tried to prevent the worst, but then he had made the mistake to mock the Irken about how he had, yet again, almost destroyed his own machine and had made a comment about how perhaps he should be the one to handle the precision tools. What had been born as mostly harmless teasing had quickly escalated into a fight and it had ended with the Invader biting down on his arm and refusing to let go until he had accepted to surrender the welder.

Zim frowned at the wound and opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, failing to provide a snarky remark. "Seal your smelly lips, Dib-worm," he ended up grumbling, clearly irritated by his inability to talk back against the obvious evidence, and roughly grabbed the exposed arm, activating the regenerator once again. A few moments and the bite was gone, leaving the skin unmarked, as if the wound had never been there. "Happy?"

Dib nodded, but then a sly smirk opened on his face. "Yeah, but…What about the scratches you left on my shoulder? Or that ugly laser scar on my back? It's been two years, but it's still troubling me," he started to list in a completely casual tone, loving how the Irken's face contorted more and more in growing annoyance. "Or my cracked ribs from last month. Do you have any idea of how much those take to heal? And they hurt all the times! And…"

"Cease it, Dib-thing!" Zim cut in, loudly, and dumped the device in the human's almost expecting hand. "Heal yourself and keep it, so in the future I won't have to put up with your foolish whining! I have more important things to do than being your medic! If you need assistance on how to use it, ask the Computer!" And without waiting for an answer, he marched out of the room, hissing out the same clicking noises he had emitted while approaching the human.

The teen watched him go, his smirk widening slightly as he turned the regenerator in his fingers. What he had said about his injuries had been true, but the real aim of his complaining had been pushing his new ally to hand the tool over. Two could play that game, even if he had to be careful not to push it too far, unless he wanted to spoil their new, still fragile, precarious balance.

He lifted his free hand to his now healed cheek once again and looked down at where the bite mark had been. Despite the harsh, intolerant act that Zim had put on, the fact that the alien had left his work and come to check on him, to _heal_ him, wasn't something he should overlook. His nemesis wasn't ready to drop the biggest part of his hostility yet, but he wanted to see those small gestures as the sign that the alien was trying, in his own, perverse way, to work with him.

A quiet scoff, half amused and half exasperated, left his throat as he started to shrug off his coat. The regenerator had a few, small buttons set in a circle around its middle. They had to be, most likely, the settings to heal the different kinds of wounds. He brought it up near his face to have a better look at it. He would have definitely taken Zim's suggestion up and asked the Computer to show him how it worked. Who knows, perhaps he would have also managed to obtain the blueprints for a more in-depth study. His grin widened a bit more. All in all, frustration aside, things weren't so bad.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

Zim's mad laughter filled the otherwise mostly quite living room, making Dib roll his eyes for the umpteenth time in the last four hours. He turned to shoot the alien an unimpressed look, but the Irken ignored him, too busy rubbing his hands together in evident pleased satisfaction.

At first, when the teen had suggested that they should have taken the afternoon off and watched some idiotic human TV show, since they had spent the whole weekend working night and day, he had objected, refusing to use precious time that could have been dedicated to his plans for such a futile activity. However, Dib had kept bugging him and an overenthusiastic GIR had soon joined him, forcing the alien to give in. At the memory of all the screeching that his antennae had been forced to bear, the Invader shot a brief glare at said robot, who was currently settled between him and his nemesis, stuffing his mouth with a bowl of sickeningly sweet popcorns. His sidekick never turned down a chance to waste his time by staring at their huge TV screen and consuming the most disgusting things.

Biting back a small huff, Zim turned his attention back on the screen. In retrospect, the teen's idea hadn't turned out to be so despicable. He had been working non-stop for days, not allowing himself a single moment of distraction, wanting to finish the filter as soon as possible, and, while he could have kept it up without much trouble, both his mind and his body seemed grateful for the break and the chance to relax. Not to mention that, once again, the hideous program that Dib had chosen for them had turned out to be much more interesting than he had expected.

"You're rooting for the Dominion, aren't you?" The human commented in that moment, shifting and stretching a bit against the seatback. He wrapped an arm around the edge of the pink couch and turned to look at the Invader, a small amused grin spreading on his face. "Figures."

"Of course I do, Dib-stink. What a foolish observation," Zim shot back in a paternalistic tone, meeting his former rival's amber eyes. "They are a _superior_ race. They have all the rights to rule and wipe away whoever is stupid enough to stand int their way! Like Irkens."

"You said the same thing about Klingons last week, when we were watching the other series," Dib placidly pointed out, his sly smile widening. Seeing the Invader cheering for the bad guys wasn't a surprise, since his nemesis instantly got attached to whatever character reminded him of the might of his still beloved Empire, but he found the other's reactions to the show pretty amusing each time. "Who's next? The Borg?"

The Irken scowled at him, one of his antenna twitching in annoyance. "Shut up, worm child. What Zim speaks is the utter truth." He crossed his arms on his chest, his expression turning pensive. "But I also must recognise the skill of that alien spy in exile. He has managed to infiltrate and fit in enemy territory without needing a disguise."

The human couldn't help snickering slightly. "You should really take notes, space boy. I kind of see a parallel here. Don't you?"

The Invader decided that the teasing wasn't worth another glare and turned his magenta orbs back on the screen, even if deep down he had to admit that the teen had a point. There was a small parallel there and perhaps that was part of the reason why he felt so attracted to the character. Not that he would have ever admitted it. "Hush and let us watch this…not to silly show of yours."

Dib shook his head, but did as he was told, not wanting to spoil the weirdly peaceful atmosphere in which they had been wrapped since they had settled down in front of the TV. He still turned to throw Zim another, brief questioning look when the alien let his head fall against the cushions, partially leaning his nape against his forearm, but, since the other didn't meet his eyes or acknowledge the contact in any other way, he could do nothing but turning his attention back to the show in turn.

The heat given off by the Irken sipped past his bare skin, making him hyper aware of the unusual closeness they were sharing. Before the start of the mess that had led them both there, he could have counted on one hand the number of the times his nemesis had touched him without meaning harm. So much had already changed in relatively so little time. And, hopefully, those would have turned out to be just the first steps in a new, righter direction.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

"I swear that this time I will cut you in pieces and feed your still living remains to the Cthulu!" Zim snarled, jumping backwards to avoid the blow that had been thrown in his direction. His voice was high-pitched and filled with heated anger, the same fierce feeling that was making his magenta orbs burning violently.

He managed to dodge the punch, but he ended up stumbling into one of the scraps that littered the floor. He didn't fall on the ground just because his PAK limbs shot out and held him up when his balance and organic legs failed him. The Irken allowed himself to be transported near one of the walls, in an area that was a bit clearer, at a safe distance from his opponent. There were a tear in the front of his uniform and a bleeding bruise was forming just above his left eye, caused by a particularly harsh kick. His breath was slightly laboured from all the yelling and the attacking he had been doing, but his mind registered none of the physical discomfort he was experiencing. The rage occupied his whole consciousness and all he could think of were all the ugly ways in which he could have unloaded it on the being who had sparked the emotion in the first place.

"Oh, _really_ , you hideous bug? Are you sure you don't wanna use my insides to decorate your lab instead?" Dib shot back from where he was standing a few metres away, visibly panting. "Like you did with that woman?"

The teen wasn't in a better shape. His clothes were all creased and there were a few tears in his T-shirt where the Irken's claws had grabbed it as they rolled on the floor, punching and kicking and hitting each other. There was also a tiny crack in one of the lenses of his glasses and he had just finished wiping a bit of blood away from his mouth. His left side hurt, badly, for the blow he had received a couple of minutes before and he was pretty sure that his ribs would have been bothering him the next day. However, he had no intention of giving in, especially not when he was in the right.

"Zim didn't do anything of the sort!" The Invader shot back in a snarl, raising his fisted hands. "Why should I use filthy disgusting human insides for a thing like _decorating_?! You are delirious!"

It was Dib's turn to growl, in both incredulous frustration and renewed anger. "You haven't heard a word of what I said, have you?! Of course _not_! Why am I even asking!" He threw his hands in the air, wincing slightly as the gesture brought a fresh wave of pain in his aching side. "Or maybe you're just trying to make me even madder! I'm talking about the fucking body you dismembered and stashed away in those tanks! Random kills are _not_ part of our deal! It's the opposite! We agreed that you would _not_ slaughter random humans anymore!"

He hadn't wanted to believe his eyes when GIR had taken him down to his nemesis's lab and he found a fresh new set of glass tanks, each of them containing a different organ. Wires had been attached to the bits of flesh, sending electrical impulses and keeping them _working_ so that the Computer could be fed with a continuous stream of data. There had even been an almost completely intact vascular system floating in one of the containers, the vessels filled with a bright green liquid in the place of the blood, which was kept flooding by a mechanical pump, set where the heart should have been.

The human had been stuck staring at the jar holding the poor woman's beating heart with a mixture of disgusted horror and furious incredulity till the moment when Zim had crossed the threshold of the lab, snapping him out of his trance and starting the fight that had quickly turned into a violent brawl. Now half of the tanks laid in pieces on the floor, the fluids and organs they had been holding spread everywhere, together with the rest of the equipment that had been destroyed in the heat of the battle. If he hadn't been so focused on trying to beat the hell out of the Irken, Dib would have been grossed out, especially since some of the organic material had ended up on his clothes and skin, but in that moment he couldn't have brought himself to care even if he had wanted to.

"How am I supposed to learn about your human physiology if I don't have test subjects?!" Zim protested loudly, his voice covering up completely the light buzzing of the broken circuits. "And you never complained about what I did to my captives before! Why do you care?! You don't even know them! Well, most of the times."

The teen had to hold back the impulse of gripping at his hair and pulling at it in frustration at the answer. " _Seriously_ , Zim?! You must be kidding me! Not even _you_ can be _this_ dense!" He exclaimed, not knowing if he was feeling more exasperated or irate. "I refuse to answer that! And I cared before too, but before I could just kick your ass for that. I didn't need to come and _talk_ it out with you as I'm forced to do now! A deal is a deal! You told me that you wouldn't go crazy and start to randomly wreck this planet and his inhabitants. How am I supposed to believe you when you do… _this_?!"

Even if more than two weeks had passed, the shadows of the nightmare still lingered in back of his mind, ready to jump before his eyes every time he and Zim fought badly. When he had entered the lab and witnessed the results of his former rival's latest experiment, his blood had run cold. It wasn't as messy as the visions of his dream had been, it was all much cleaner and more contained, but he had seen the seeds of the same lucid madness in the scene. Nothing could have guaranteed him that the alien wouldn't have moved from one, isolated experiment to a genocide. That was the main reason why he had instantly attacked the Irken, verbally first and physically later, when the other had tried to dismiss the subject as if it was nothing of import.

"If you want to learn about human physiology there are books! You don't need to…to kill people and open them up!" He went on, stalking to where Zim stood. He didn't know yet if he wanted to land the punch that the Invader had managed to avoid or if he just wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him, in the hope that his stupid alien brain found a bit of common sense. "Why can't you just…just stop being a fucking _monster_?!"

The violence with which the human had spoken the last word instinctively made the Irken shift backwards, but he couldn't go far because his PAK instantly connected with the metal of the wall behind him. His antennae shot up in surprise, as his brain registered that he was _trapped_ , and that distraction was enough to allow Dib to shove him even harder against the cold surface. His back arched as his head was forced against the wall by the arm pressing on his neck, threatening to choke him. He could feel the teen's other hand pushing roughly against his chest, to keep him in place.

"That's what you think I am, Dib-worm? A _monster_?" He hissed, refusing to acknowledge his current disadvantage and how much he hated the fact that, in their current position, their height difference seemed to be even more pronounced, allowing his former rival to tower over him. He wrapped his fingers around the other's forearm, trying to push him off. "Then know this, human. You are right! I'm Irken and my exile will never change that! If you can't deal with what I am, then you should leave. I don't need a spineless coward by my side!"

Dib's amber orbs narrowed even more at those words and he shoved his arm even harder against the alien's throat, ignoring the stinging of the claws sinking in his flesh, past the sleeves of his coat. "Is that what you _really_ want, Zim? For me to leave and go back being your enemy? Standing in your way?" He shot back, his voice lower now, but still burning with bitterness.

He held the Invader's large magenta orbs as he spoke and didn't miss how they dropped away at the end of his question. The eye contact was broken for a mere second, but it was enough to give him the answer he needed. A wave of vicious satisfaction flared up in his chest and he ignored the deep look of hatred and spite that twisted Zim's feature immediately after. That alliance was as _toxic_ as their enmity had been, or perhaps even more, considering how unsteady and edgy it was. At least as enemies they had had some steady traits they could cling to in the time of uncertainties, but now there was nothing of the sort left. Everything seemed to be up to their moods and whims, with little to no real control.

The human gritted his teeth. The most striking example of how that situation was pure madness were the same contrasting feeling he was experiencing in that very moment. His mind was filled with anger and hate and he wished nothing more than to hurt Zim, _badly_ , his thoughts even reaching out to touch his childish, gory daydreams that featured the Irken strapped on an operating table, bleeding and cut open, organs exposed for Dib's own delight. On the other hand, though, he was hyperaware of the lack of distance between them and that made a completely different kind of heat blossom in his chest. The despise he could read in the Invader's eyes didn't put that warmth off, but, absurdly, it seemed to _feed_ it even more. It almost made him want to discard that argument and _kiss_ Zim stupid into submission. _Almost_.

"That's what I thought," he resumed in an even quieter tone, chasing away those crazy thoughts. It wasn't the right moment to analyse his own inner contradictions. He needed to wrap up that fight and leave. He really couldn't be around his nemesis right now. His expression turned determined and his voice strengthened once again. "If you want us to keep working together…No more killing, Zim. Unless it's unavoidable and _strictly_ necessary. And even in that case, we talk about it first. I don't trust you or your judgement, stupid alien."

The Irken growled like a caged animal, pushing harder against the arms that were keeping him trapped. He hated being ordered around, now that he was finally starting to get comfortable with the idea that he didn't belong to anyone, that he didn't have anyone to answer to. Especially by the person who had encouraged him to pursue that new mission of his in the first place. And he detested all the restrictions that Dib was forcing on him every single day, making him feel constantly trapped as he physically was in that moment.

"You don't get to give me orders, you unworthy being! I am _ZIM_!" He exclaimed, angrily yelling each word in the teen's face. "I'm your future overlord and _you_ should bow to me!" He gripped even tighter at the arm holding him with one hand, while the claws of the other one went to grab the torn front of Dib's T-shirt. One of his PAK legs shot out and curved over their heads, its sharp end aiming dangerously towards the human's chest. "Do _not_ challenge me, worm child, if you wish to keep your pathetic filthy existence."

A shiver ran down Dib's spine at the sharp threat, but he forced himself to stand his ground. "Is that so, space scum? Then do it! Show me that you still have that in you. That you're really a monster and nothing else," he talked back, his tone as full of defiance as his eyes were. His gaze darted towards the metallic limb, before finding his nemesis's orbs again. He was playing with fire and he had the feeling that his chances to get burnt were growing faster and faster, but he didn't allow the prospect to scare him. Too much was at stake, as per usual. "Do it. Stab me, hurt me, hell, _kill_ me, because, no matter what you'll do, I won't bow to you, Zim. _Never_."

The Invader let out a piercing clicking sound at that. It would have been impossible to say if it was an actual word, a curse, or just a noise of pure frustration. His body tensed, perhaps in the attempt of holding back an unstoppable wave of fury, and then his PAK leg moved, diving down towards the teen's vulnerable body.

The human hardly had the time to widen his eyes in horror, a gasp escaping his lips because, despite what he had said, he hadn't expected Zim to attack him, perhaps with the intent to kill, dread instantly spreading in his limbs. However, instead of the feeling of his flesh being pierced, he just felt a sharp pain exploding in the side of his head, where the metallic limb hit him with its smooth side. The blow, while painful, wasn't even strong enough to cause a real bump to form, and Dib was left feeling dazed by it mostly because it had caught him off guard.

Zim exploited his former rival's bafflement to shove him off and free himself from his grip, an irritated scoff leaving his lips. "Enough of your idiocy, Dib-thing," he grumbled under his breath, fists clenched in still lingering fury. "You have wasted too much of Zim's time already."

He had been oh-so-tempted to give the moron what he seemed to be begging for, just for the satisfaction to see the terror and the regret in his face as he realised that death was upon him. However, the thought had lingered just for a moment and then he had decided that the dread that, for a moment, had filled those amber eyes would have had to do. It might not have been as fulfilling as the feeling of the human's blood on his hands would have, but he knew that, on the long term, it was the best choice. If he had killed Dib, or damaged him irreparably, or even just driven him away, he would have been the one filled with regrets.

"Begone with you, foolish creature," he went on, waving a hand dismissively as he stalked past the teen, heading for the main console of the room, wanting the Computer to run a diagnostic to assess the real entity of the damages that had been done to the room. "I have to clean up the mess you made in my lab." He didn't turn around to look at the teen, but he added, in a quiet voice: "And I will ask the Computer to download all the data and the studies that have been done on your inferior physiology, once I'll be done."

Dib was left standing in his spot, a hand rubbing distractedly the spot that had been hit, still too shocked to move a muscle. There was a part of him that wanted to point out that he wasn't the only responsible of that mess, but he decided against it. He couldn't risk sparking the fight up once again, especially not after the fright he had just got. Besides, Zim's last sentence was an implicit assent to his "no more killings" demand, so he had reached his aim. He should be satisfied with it and leave the matter and all the thoughts that it had brought up be, at least for the moment.

Swallowing slightly, he turned on his heels and headed for the door without a word, forcing himself not to glance back towards the Invader. Some time apart would have done good to them both. Later, they would have gone back acting as if that disastrous exchange had never happened and trying to make things between them work. However, as he crossed the threshold of the laboratory, he couldn't help wondering once again if his choice to side with Zim hadn't, at the end of the day, being just a huge, irreparable mistake.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

"For the Tallest! It _burns_! Again!"

"Tell me again why you're so hellbent on doing something so stupid? And, especially, why am I assisting you in this idiotic, _masochistic_ plan when there are safer, less painful ways to check the effectiveness of our compound?"

"Shut up, Dib-stink! Nothing can be more precise and effective in marking my success than the reactions of my amazing superior body!"

"Whatever, space boy. Go on then. It's your skin that's _melting_."

Zim grumbled an Irken curse under his breath and grabbed the next glass, while Dib simply shook his head and rolled his eyes in exasperation. Since the atmosphere filter was almost ready to be set in place, the Invader had decided to dedicate himself to a smaller side project, namely trying to create a chemical substance that could purify small amounts of water and make them harmless for his physiology. Of course, detoxing the water bodies of the whole planet would have taken time and much more than a few effervescent pills and the Invader was planning to deal with it through his next long-term project. For the moment, he wanted at least to make sure that the liquid wouldn't have been a problem in his daily life anymore. However, instead of allowing the Computer to analyse the level of pollutants in the glasses in which they had poured the chemicals they had created earlier, Zim was stubbornly using _himself_ as the litmus test.

"Give me that," Dib sighed, snatching the now half empty glass from the Irken's hand and walking over to the nearest console to feed the liquid to the Computer, so that it could have analysed its composition. They hadn't had much luck for now, even if their current mixture had proven to be more effective than the first ones they had synthetized.

He took a moment to study the graphics the machine had projected on the main screen, pulling out his small notebook from the pockets of the lab coat Zim had handed him when he had joined him in the lab, hours before, and noting down a few corrections to the formula of the chemical. Then he turned to shoot a look at his new ally, who was wiping his arm dry. The pained frown on the alien's face made him smirk, but he bit back the teasing comment that had come to his lips and he took a sip of the purified water instead.

"You know, we need to work on the taste of this thing too," he commented, making a face and setting the glass down, before joining the alien back at the working table. "This one tastes like rotten soap. Less weird than the one that tasted like pamplemousse ice cream, but at least that didn't suck."

Zim openly scowled at him and Dib managed to narrowly avoid the punch that was thrown in the direction of his stomach. "Shut your mouth and make yourself useful, foolish human," he ordered in a commanding tone, lowering his goggles back on his eyes, antennae twitching in irritation. "Prove me that your big head is housing a functioning brain."

This time the teen allowed himself to grin in amusement at the movements that the appendage made, even if he made sure that the Irken couldn't see his expression. "My head isn't big. But fine. You're always so touchy," he commented, adjusting his own glasses before setting himself in front of one of the weird-looking microscopes. The power of enlargement they could reach amazed him every time. No human technology had ever come closer to it and it probably wouldn't have for decades. Unless it got a little, _alien_ push. "What's up? Are you moody because your _amazing_ intellect is taking too long to figure this one out, uh?"

This time the blow reached his target and Dib found himself on the ground, torn between moaning in pain and cursing the alien who was smirking oh-so-smugly down at him.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

It was a quiet night. The air was pleasantly warm, a reminder than summer was getting closer and closer, and the sky was clear, not a cloud preventing the heavens to shine in all their glory. Despite the light pollution, a hint of the Milky Way was visible, the denser trail of stars passing right above the roof of the Membrane household, promising adventures and wonders to whoever was open to let themselves be sucked into the view.

Dib allowed a quiet content sigh to escape his lips, as he relaxed against the tiles, nape comfortably cushioned on one of his arms, while the other was laid across his chest. Calm nights had become a luxury for him and, now that he finally had the chance to have one, he had all the intentions to enjoy it. For once he hadn't taken his instrumentation with him and even his laptop laid turned off on his desk. He just wanted to lie there, enjoy the sight of the starry sky and, if possible, think about nothing at all. This assuming that his companion would have allowed it.

The human turned his head on one side to be able to shoot a look at the disguised alien sat next to him, palms firmly planted on the roof and weight leaning on them. There was a light frown on his green features and his fake violet eyes were narrowed in concentration. When, earlier that day, he had invited Zim to stargaze with him, the Irken had laughed in his face, before turning his attention back on the circuit he had been rerouting, but he had showed up on his doorstep anyway, not much past dinnertime. Dib hadn't been surprised. That was typical Zim behaviour.

"I don't get it," the Invader spoke in that moment, breaking the relaxed silent, his frown turning into a full scowl. "This "stargazing" thingy you like to do. It's useless. And _boring_." He gestured up towards the sky with a hand. "What I'm supposed to do? Just stare at your stupid stars?"

Dib rolled his eyes and another sigh escaped his lips, but this time it was an exasperated one. Peace time was already over. "Don't make me regret inviting you here," he grumbled unhappily, even if he knew that he had no one but himself to blame for that choice. He and his new ally needed some "bonding time", after the last _ugly_ fight they had had, and, since he was sure that Zim would have said no to another Star Trek marathon, he had come up with something different. Now, however, he was starting to think that he should have considered his options better. "I don't have all your experience in space travel. And the sight is pretty, so yeah. Shut your mouth and watch the stars."

"If this is your idea of a "pretty sight", then it's no surprise that you're nothing but a pathetic pig," the Irken stated matter-of-factly, but there was no real heat in his mocking. He scoffed and let himself fall down next to the human, two of his spider legs emerging and intersecting behind him, to create a support for his head, so that he could stay comfortably reclined without having his back arched by his PAK. "And you have a spaceship, Dib-thing. Use it."

"Not everyone finds things _exploding_ pretty, Zim," the teen pointed out, moving his eyes back on the sky. "And I still haven't managed to purge Tak's original programming from the ship's main computer. It doesn't exactly like me, so I have the feeling that I'd be asking for troubles, if I told it to take me up for a pleasure trip. I mean, I tried a few times, but I always had to come up with some excuse to explain why I wanted to go to space…"

Zim offered him a creepy shark smirk, pinkish sharp teeth fully showing. "You're such a loser," was his comment, before he turned to look up at the stars too. "And Zim is sure that even a primitive creature like you would be able to see the beauty in the sight of a supernova." He blindly reached out to poke the human's side. "I won't ask you to understand the complex grace of an exploding planet. That is _clearly_ out of your league."

"Of course. My intellect is far too limited for that, isn't it?" Dib answered easily, the sarcasm in his voice gaining him another, harsher jab in the ribs. "But you're right, space boy. I think I'd like to see a supernova. Maybe one day, if this mad plan of yours works out…"

He let his voice trail off and reached out and shoved the Irken's shoulder back, receiving a protesting clicking sound as an answer, but nothing more. The alien had to be in a good mood, considering all the liberties he was allowing him without putting up much resistance.

The thought brought back something he had observed in the last two weeks and a half. Zim had never struck him as a…touchy-feely person. Quite the contrary. Physical contact wasn't something that the Invader considered welcome, if not as a mean to inflict pain. Dib had some very _bad_ memories of how skilled the alien was when it came to physical torture. And yet, as the days passed, his nemesis had started to reach out for him more and more frequently. Pushing him, poking any possible spot on his torso, brushing against him while they worked together, grabbing his wrists or even his face to stop his movements or make him listen. It was weird, especially since Zim never acknowledged those gestures, and the human had started to wonder whether or not the Invader was conscious of what he was doing. Questioning him directly perhaps wasn't the safest option, but Dib hadn't been playing on the "safe" side for a long time.

"Hey, Zim. Can I ask you something?" He started, his tone sounding more cautious than casual as he had wanted it to be. He gulped slightly when the Irken shot him a brief, unimpressed look, but, since nothing else came, not an insult, not a blow, he decided that he could go on. "I kinda noticed that you…uh, not that it's a bad thing or that I mind too much, but it's a bit odd coming from you, so I thought that I could ask and…" He forced himself to stop, realising that he had started to babble already. "You…You've been touching me _a lot_. For your standards, at least. So…why's that?"

Zim's expression contracted slightly and he turned his head away from Dib with a jerky movement. He had had no idea of what idiotic question could have left the human's lips, but _that_ was the last thing he would have expected to hear. And it surely was an inquiry he didn't want to answer. However, he was sure that his former rival wouldn't have let the matter go if he hadn't been offered a reply, which meant that the worm child would have kept bugging him. He always did.

"What a dumb question," he commented, feeling pleased at the clear hint of irritation he managed to give to his voice. It covered up perfectly the nagging uneasiness that the query had gifted him. The more he would have managed to play it off, the less the issue would have appeared as the _big_ deal it actually was for him and his people.

He had realised that his attitude towards Dib had changed, even if it had taken him a while to notice, but, since the teen hadn't seemed to want to acknowledge it, he had chosen to do the same and not to restrain himself. Also because he might not have been able to, even if he had tried. His body seemed to react to the impulse following an old instinct that should have been forgotten, but that, instead, had somehow resurfaced in him, perhaps once again because of the peculiar twist his life had taken. Ignoring it had seemed to be, as per usual, the easiest solution, but now that his stupid ally had brought it up there was no way that he could do it.

"Irkens don't touch each other without a reason. Or anyone else, for the matter," he resumed, with actual annoyance in his tone this time, his eyes still stubbornly avoiding Dib. "I already told you that we don't bond with others…usually, so we don't need any of those disgusting affectionate gestures you humans seem to be so fond of. Well, you and GIR." He made a face, remembering all the time his robot had hugged him to death or just grabbed and clung on him. The fact that he had got used to those behaviours, to the point of _liking_ them, was another truth he would have never admitted. "However, in this case too, there are…exceptions."

He made a pause and dared to throw a glance in the human's direction, finding that Dib had shifted slightly more on his side to be able to fully look at him. The Irken couldn't help thinking about how much he disliked the bothersome feeling of those amber orbs on him and frowned even deeper, but he avoided to comment on the fact. It would have just made the conversation harder. It was already a miracle that his nemesis was keeping his big mouth shut.

"We are _genetically_ a race of trained invaders. Even the Irkens who don't achieve that rank or aren't in the military…We all have the same mindset. Strict regard for hierarchy but also ruthless competitiveness. There is no space for slacking, no space to be…comfortable around each other," he went on, with a thick hint of reluctance. He and Dib might be officially allies now and with every day that passed the idea that the human could betray him became less and less likely, but it still felt _wrong_ to give out the most shameful and guarded secrets of his race as he was doing. His training and conditioning made it almost difficult to get the words out. "Unless we are talking about one of those bonds I told you about. In that case, the Irkens involved tend to engage in physical contact quite often. They stand too close, touch even when it's not strictly necessary, spend most of their time together. It's how you can tell that they share one of those repugnant connections."

Dib blinked as the alien finished his explanation, impressed by how his nemesis had succeeded in replying to his question clearly enough without speaking the real answer out aloud. Zim had never mentioned himself, but all he had wanted to know was there, hidden between the lines and yet so clear that he couldn't have missed it even if he had wanted to. Talking about those exceptions, the Invader had told him why he had been acting that way, managing to throw in a considerable amount of despise without addressing it towards himself. Not directly, at least.

"So, you guys get touchy-feely when you're comfortable around someone," he commented, his words being more of a statement than a question.

He was tempted to ask more, both because he was curious to expand the fragments of information he had once again been offered and simply because he would have enjoyed seeing Zim _squirming_ for once, but he held his tongue. Pressing on the matter would have meant upsetting the Invader and ruining that subtle attempt at sharing that the other had just made. So, instead, after a long moment of hesitation, he reached out with his free arm and clumsily grabbed his nemesis's hand, praying fervently that the alien wouldn't have slaughtered him for having dared such a thing. It wasn't meant to be more than physically establishing a connection, even if in the eyes of society it wasn't the most platonic of gestures, not between two guys at least. However, his and Zim's relationship had always been anything but conventional, just as the mess of feelings they had for each other couldn't fit only one category. The fact that one of them was a being from outer space merely _started_ to explain why.

"We aren't very different in this," he added, after a moment, shifting back into his previous position. He had felt the Invader's tensing under his touch, but the other hadn't pulled away, fact that he decided to interpret as a good sign. "Uh, I mean…Humans get touchy-feely too when they're comfortable around someone."

Zim glanced down at their intertwined fingers, seriously considering tearing his own hand out of Dib's for a moment, to show a distaste that he wasn't feeling, but then his fake violet orbs flew back towards the stars, just as his former rival's amber eyes had done, and he simply scoffed. The human was answering to his unspoken words with more innuendos. He could work with that. Besides, he was starting to think that, perhaps, that whole stargazing activity wasn't _so_ bad, all considered.

"You know, Dib-worm. Maybe one day I'll take your big, smelly head to see a supernova."

* * *

Hey there!

The chapter is a bit later than I had planned, but I managed to deliver it quickly enough anyway! For once...Miracle? Most likely ^^" I hope it makes up a bit for how long I've kept you waiting for the previous one...and for how long I'll have to keep you waiting for the next. At the beginning of September I have a huge exam and so I really need to start focusing on my studying. Plus, I also made myself join a writing event (in a moment of madness), wh uh means that my writing time will be mostly dedicated to that one and I'll have no time to work on this story till the piece for the event will be done =.= I'm sorry, I really miscalculated my schedule when I signed up. I might as well be another month before I manage to deliver the next part of Broken Kalopsia. *heavy sigh*  
Also, today is the date they release(d) the movie isn't it? Who knows when I'll get to watch it...but anyway I'm glad I managed to find the time to post, because it seemed appropriate to celebrate!

This said, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! It doesn't bring the plot forward, but I thought it was necessary to offer a view of how Zim's and Dib's alliance works!I've enjoyed writing the different shades and I hope you enjoyed reading them. They definitely are far from finding a proper balance, and keep switching between awkward friendship moments to almost full blown enmity. But they are both trying, as much as they can considering their situation and their differences.  
Gosh, towards the end I got a bit cheesy, I'm disgusted with myself xD It's not meant to be a fully romantic moment, even if it can be read as one, of course. I wanted to draw out intimacy, for the most, which is a bit different. But the lines here are so blurred that it's hard to make them out. Yay for ambiguity!

Aaand...I failed once again to answer to the comments. I'm so bad in this period, I'm really sorry! I'll get those done before the next chapter, I swear. With all the time that'll pass (sssorry), I MUST find the chance to reply to them all.

In the meanwhile, I'm taking once again you all for your support and endless patience! I don't really deserve it considering how hectic my posting schedule has been. Honestly, this story has got more popular than I ever imagined and I'm still astonished by all the love you people are showing it. It's really touching. Thank you, from the heart.

And of course I'm going to send a virtual hug (our simply positive vibes, if you guys are the non-touching types like me) to all my reviewers, who somehow are bearing all my crap and delays. You are **AMAZING**.

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcomed and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!

PS: Yes, the author is a Trekkie to the core.


	36. Chapter 36

The loud sound of glass shuttering echoed in the whole house without a warning, followed by a few muffled noises and a stream of curses. Gaz cracked one eye open and shot a look at her alarm clock, discovering with a wave of irritated displeasure that it was four whole minutes before her waking time. Too little time to even just consider going back to sleep, but she still felt robbed of a precious part of her rest.

With a quiet growl, she kicked the violet sheets off her legs and stood up, heading for the door. Her hand reached out for the console resting on the nightstand and she grabbed it blindly as she made her way out of the room. The noise had come from downstairs, most likely from the kitchen, and she knew exactly whom was too blame. She knew those two voices far too well, even if more and more often she wished that she had never heard them in her life.

When she reached the incriminated room, deep scowl firmly in place, she found, as expected, her brother and the undisguised alien bickering harshly as per usual. The shards of whatever they had broken had already been collected and were currently lying on a rug, in the middle of the table. She almost rolled her eyes, wondering why Dib needed to come back home when he spent the night at Zim's, when he could have just headed to Skool from there instead. It would have spared her the torture of having to bear their idiotic attics first thing in the morning. Their father was almost never home and she could always tell when the older teen didn't sleep in his bed and she couldn't have cared less. So, it wasn't like he had any real need to try and sneak around.

"You two shut up, I haven't had my morning soda yet," she ordered, stepping inside the room and casting a glance towards the floor to make sure that no fragment was still there, threatening to cut her bare feet. Even if she didn't show it, as she went to retrieve aforementioned beverage from the fridge, she felt a spark of satisfaction as the discussion instantly died out at her command. She was well aware of how scary she was, even now, with her messy bed hair and her pink pig-theme pyjamas. No matter how she looked or what she wore, the other two knew her too well to ever make the mistake to consider her harmless.

"Hey, Gaz. Morning," the scythe-haired boy greeted her, a hint of cautiousness in his tone, as if he had been testing the waters. "Uh, sorry about the…noise. Zim dro…"

"I did nothing of the sort!" The Invader stepped in loudly, preventing the older human from finishing the sentence. "Don't blame your clumsiness on me, worm child!"

Gaz turned to shoot the alien a heated glare. It was too early for his screeching. She wouldn't have tolerated them, just as she wouldn't have accepted to deal with their crap after they had woken her up. They should be thankful that she hadn't harmed them yet. "I don't care who made the mess. Just finish to clean it up. _Quietly_."

She took a seat at the table, grabbing the cereals that were set next to the glass shards and pouring them in the bowl she had retrieved, not missing the hiss and the murderous look that the Irken addressed to her brother. Her frown tightened slightly, as she got ready to spit out another threat, but the older teen simply ignored the provocation and hurried to get rid of the broken pot.

The girl relaxed a bit against the chair, stuffing a spoonful of food in her mouth. Her narrowed eyes quickly scanned the room, catching the sight of drying dishes in the sink and of her brother's Skool bag and coat hung on one of the chairs. Apparently the boy had already gone through his morning routine. Good. It meant that they wouldn't have stayed long. A small smirk threatened to touch her lips. On the contrary, she was sure that they would have rushed out in a hurry as soon as she would have given them the small piece of information in her possess. The sound of approaching footsteps was already starting to become well audible anyway.

"Ah, Dib. Dad's home, by the way," she said in the most casual of tones, but her eyes flashed with a hint of aggressive amusement as she saw the Irken's antennae perking up instantly, even if it was hard to tell if it was a reaction to her words or to the sound of the door that led to the underground lab opening. What was sure was that the horrified expression on the alien's face matched the one her sibling was wearing perfectly.

What came next happened in the matter of a few moments. Dib grabbed his trench coat and shoved it on the top of Zim's head, effectively hiding everything that was too alien to pass for human right before Membrane could step into the room.

"Hey, Dad! Zim and I are leaving, yeah," the older teen rushed to exclaim, before the man could do or say something. Then, catching the Invader's wrist with one hand and his bag with the other, he started to drag his new ally out of the room, towards the main door. "We, uh, need to walk the dog before Skool! See you!"

The alien hardly had the time to wave them with the hand he wasn't using to keep the coat on his head and a moment later they were gone, the door slamming shut behind them. The Professor was left staring at the spot where his son had been till a few seconds before, while Gaz shook her head and turned back towards her breakfast, switching her console on. She was totally unimpressed with the pathetic show that had just played before her eyes, but she had to admit that it was still a bit weird to see Dib covering up for Zim in such a showy way, instead of trying to expose the other's true nature. She knew that they were working together, but, much to her dismay, she had realised that it would have taken her some time to get used to the new state of things.

A sigh coming out from her father's hidden lips distracted her from those irritating thoughts and she lifted her head to shoot the man a quick glance. She watched him shaking his head as he took a sit next to her, grabbing the box of cereals and filling up a bowl for himself, instead of heading back to his lab as she had expected him to do. It was a rarity to have him home for breakfast, so the girl paused her game and opened her eyes a bit.

"Your brother is hiding something from me, isn't he?" Membrane ended up saying, after he had crunched and swallowed the first mouthful of food, accepting the mug of hot coffee that one of the robots had handed him. "Do you know something about it?"

Gaz stared at the man for a moment, fighting back the intense impulse to loudly scoff and ask him if he was serious. He had been oblivious to Dib's messes till that moment, even when the boy had been screaming in his face that he was fighting a being from outer space, and _now_ he chose to finally notice that something was off?

"Of course I do. He is hate-dating an alien and they're planning to conquer and rule the world," she answered flatly, her eyes narrowing once again as she dropped them back on her bowl. The slight hint of bitterness she had experienced at her father's words had caught her off guard, but she had quickly recovered from it.

"My poor insane son," was the expected answer that she got, followed by another sigh. It was clear that the Professor hadn't taken her words seriously, as per usual when it came to whatever was somehow related to her brother's paranormal interests. "I wished that he hanged out with other people, aside from that foreign friend of his. Someone who isn't as deep as he is in that senseless parascience stuff. Perhaps it would help him finally seeing reason."

The girl actually scoffed out aloud this time and stood up, even if she had hardly eaten half of her meal. "Dad, I love you, but maybe it's really time that you take those glasses off and have a look at the world around you," she stated, picking up her game. Her tone was calm and emotionless, but if her eyes had been opened the sourness would have been evident in her amber orbs. "Dib isn't the only one who is in desperate need to see reason here." She turned on her heels. "I have to get ready for Skool. Have a nice day."

As she left the room, she was sure that Membrane had to be gaping at her retreating back, behind the high collar of his lab coat. Once he would have recovered, the man would have probably sighed for the third time, this time resignedly complaining about his poor insane _daughter_ , but the thought, instead of making her upset, brought the shadow of a smirk on her lips. Perhaps she was really starting to get infected by Zim's and Dib's shared madness. However, she had to admit, at least to herself, that, as annoying as it might be, at the end of the day it wasn't as bad as she had anticipated. There was something incredibly _liberating_ in the feeling, , even if she would have preferred keeping her sanity and not getting stuck in it.

The thought made her scoff again, but the irritation in the sound didn't touch her expression this time. After all, there was also the fact that her father hadn't made it to her birthday dinner, while her brother and the alien had got her a ride to another of those gaming planets. That, and her tendency to hold grudges, made playing favourites much easier.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

A huff echoed in the empty corridor, the sound bouncing between the air ducts on the ceiling and the rusty lockers set against the walls. The frown on Gaz's face had got deeper and deeper as the minutes passed, so slowly that they felt like hours to her, and she was getting less and less pleased to see her lunch break ticking away with them.

"How much longer, Dib?" She questioned aggressively, even if her eyes remained locked on the screen of her game. She was already fed up with having to stand in that corridor, with the smell of rotten detergent and her fidgeting brother as her only company. "I'm starting to starve. And if when we get to the cafeteria all the mashed potatoes are gone, I swear that I'll take your useless brain out, smash it and it eat in their place."

She saw the older teen cringing at her threat, but he had the good sense to keep silent, instead of making some idiotic comment about cannibalism or about the fact that she sounded like Zim when she said that kind of things. Her eyes narrowed ever more. Speaking of the alien, the moron deserved her rage just as much, considering that he was the reason why she was stuck in that corridor and wasn't instead comfortably sat in the Skool cafeteria, enjoying the passable food they served. It was to be said that she had accepted to accompany her sibling to pick the alien up at the counsellor's office, but she had thought that it would have been a quick and painless ordeal. Instead, it had already been ten good minutes of senseless wait.

"Didn't he say that he would be done by the start of lunch break?" She pressed again, lifting her gaze just for the time to shoot a quick glare at the closed door, before lowering it again on the display. After the little show the two idiots had put on that morning, she had expected to be rid of their even more stupid shenanigans for the rest of the day, but apparently she had been wrong. She should have cursed her own curiosity for putting her in that unpleasant situation, since wanting to see this famous Ms Xander, loving helper of moronic lost causes, was the real reason why she had said yes to Dib, but dumping the blame on the boy and the Invader was much easier. And she liked it better as a strategy.

"That's what he said," the older teen sighed from next to her, even if his tone was a bit tense, just as his stance. One of his arms was tacked between his back and the wall, while he was holding Zim's alien tablet with the other hand. "I mean, he said "around the start of lunch break"? I…I didn't tell him that I'd… _we_ 'd be coming, so…Uh, I couldn't ask for the exact time."

"If I had known that hanging out with him would have made you this sappy, I'd have never suggested you to accept that offer," Gaz shot back, her voice colouring with distaste. She couldn't believe what she had just heard. Without knowing it, she had allowed herself to be dragged into some sort of awkward attempt from Dib's part to surprise Zim with what should have supposed to be a nice gesture, at least in a human's eyes. Pity that their green companion was anything but. Plus, the Invader had never been a fan of surprises in the first place. Her brother knew all that, far too well, and that had to be the reason why he had insisted that she should have come too. This way the Irken would have been forced to control his possible negative reaction not to make her mad.

A moody snort left her throat. She reluctantly had to admit that, for once, her sibling had been smart with his strategy, even if, in her eyes, he could have simply avoided the whole thing. "And what did I tell you about being subtle? He'll never get it, so you can just give up and try something else."

"What are you even talking about?! Gaz!" Dib spluttered next to her, instantly tensing and detaching himself from the wall. Watching him with the corner of her eye, she couldn't help wondering if he realised how defensive he looked. "I'm not trying…anything, okay? We discussed this already. Zim is just my…former enemy, new ally and nemesis. That's it. And that's all we'll ever be, so please, drop the act. It's…annoying. And I wasn't trying to surprise him or anything. Just…I need to show him something and discussing it along the way will save time at lunch. Yeah."

The girl lifted her head again and this time the look she offered to her sibling was long and fully unimpressed. She would have left alone the first part of his speech. She had decided that she would have stayed out of _that_ part of the messy situation. It was a can of worms she really did _not_ want to open. However, she had a lot to talk back on the second part, considering that Dib himself wasn't sounding convinced of his own words.

"Stop insulting my intelligence. Whether you're doing it in a _failed_ attempt at wooing or just because you're smitten and you feel like acting nice, you're trying to surprise him," she sentenced, in a tone that was final. "So shut up and stop being an even worse pain in my ass."

She never knew if the older teen would have tried to talk back and denied the obvious once more because that was when the door _finally_ opened, putting a hand to both that irritating discussion and to the even more annoying wait. Her gaze moved away from her brother and landed on the two people who were getting out of the room. One of her amber eyes opened slightly, carrying a hint of surprised, at the sight of the easy stance that Zim was wearing around the woman that had followed him, and it stayed like that for a moment, even after the alien had noticed them and tensed, most of his nonchalance instantly gone.

"What are you two doing here?!" The Irken hissed, his feature contorting in a suspicious frown. "I thought we were meeting in the yard for foodening break!" His disguised violet eyes moved on Gaz herself for a moment before locking on Dib. "Is this some sort of trick?!"

Behind him Ms Xander let out a deep sigh, instantly catching the girl's attention. "Zim, at times I wonder if you really listen to me or if you just pretend to," she commented, running a hand in her blond hair. "What have we just finished discussing?"

The Invader's frown just deepened. "I will _not_ give up on caution, Acelynn-doc," he stated solemnly, lifting his chin in a show of thick stubbornness. "My mission is too important."

"There's a different between caution and paranoia," the counsellor pointed out, her voice torn between amused exasperation and resignation. "But I guess we'll have to work on that, won't we?" She shook his head and finally addressed the two teens. "Hi, Dib. It's good to see you again. And you must be Gaz, right? Nice to meet you. I've heard… quite a lot about you."

"Uh, hello Acelynn," was Dib's awkward answer, before the scythe-haired boy quickly returned his attention on the still squinting alien. "I…I have something to show you." He clumsily turned out the tablet and his fingers quickly walked on its smooth surface while Zim stalked towards him to be able to get a look. "I thought that we…could discuss this while Gaz grabs lunch for me and her, so we won't bore her with our project. That's…That's why I came."

Gaz rolled her eyes at the utter lie her sibling had thrown out, not really liking to have been used as a cover up, but she chose not to correct him. It would have meant starting a fight and she didn't want to risk getting involved into it. However, she would have made sure to kick Dib's ass extra hard, the next time she would have taken him to the park to teach him how to fight. Also because she had apparently been appointed as the waitress of the day.

"Morons. I can't believe that I'll have to be the third wheel of their stupid lunch date," she grumbled under her breath, watching as the other two started to make their way along the corridor, their sides bumping together as they discussed bent over the tablet screen, without even checking if she was following or not. She wasn't surprised though, considering that they had already got absorbed in each other. She wondered how they were supposed to rule not just a planet but a whole empire, if they kept forgetting about the rest of the universe almost every time they were together. "And then Dib says that _his_ life sucks."

"Are they…dating?" Ms Xander's perplexed voice came from behind her, averting her attention from the retreating pair. When she turned around she found the woman looking at her, obviously puzzled by her words. The girl couldn't have blamed her for it, though. Almost everything about Dib's and Zim's relationship was irritatingly confusing, especially if you didn't know the main facts.

"No, they aren't. But it would be better for everyone if they got their heads out of their asses and started to," she claimed, starting to walk away. She had no intention of getting stuck in a one-on-one conversation with a psychologist. "Maybe that way they'd unload the mutual frustration and anger for each other in ways that don't involve me being present to play the moderator." Her expression darkened. "I hate that role. But of course, knowing them, they'll take less to conquer this stupid planet than to realise that."

When the woman called out for her, she didn't even bother to turn and just kept stalking her way towards the cafeteria. Hopefully, by the time she would have joined them in what had once been _her_ personal spot with the food, the two morons would have quitted most of their bullshit. If not, she would have seen that they would have and _quickly_.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

"I don't get it. I tried _everything_ , but I can't get that stinky human's eyes to pop out!"

Zim's affirmation was followed by a frustrated growl and by a few crumbles of waffles flying up as the alien threw his hands in the air to underline his point. He was sitting between the Membrane siblings on the ground of the Hi Skool back yard, in the spot that he and Gaz had been sharing for a while. The girl hadn't been thrilled when, after the Irken and her brother had joined force, Zim had started to bring Dib there too, but, in the end, that had been just another thing she had chosen to swallow for the sake of keeping an eye on the two. Besides, she had complete control on who could come to her spot and when, so it was an almost decent compromise.

"It's…meant metaphorically, Zim," Dib answered with an exasperated but unimpressed sigh. The Invader's ignorance and misunderstanding of the Earthen ways of saying and habits was both funny and aggravating at times, but it no longer surprised any of them. "Come on, you really didn't know that? And whose eyes do you want to pop out anyway? Zim, we discussed the whole "no more hurting random people" thing, remember?"

"No one in particular," the Irken clearly lied. "And I thought it was the "no more killing random humans" thingie. You never said anything about hurting. And it's not random. It's like…that time with Louis?" He failed to simulate a noncaring shrug and hurried to go on before the older teen could talk back. "It's just…an idea for an experiment I had some time ago. But I surely never thought to create something so astonishing that would have made the eyes of the whole mankind pop out, so that I could conquer this stupid ball of dirt. Not the Mighty Zim!"

He scoffed and Gaz rolled her eyes. If there was something Zim was very good at was digging his own grave. However, her interest piqued up as the alien went on. "And it's a lie that no one can do that, Dib-stink. Irkens can."

Dib, who had clearly been torn between punching the Invader and facepalming, stopped mid-gesture, his eyes widening, and the girl fully lifted her head from the display of her console as Zim proceeded to take off one of his contact lenses, after having quickly but thoroughly checked that there was no one else around. He might have stopped worrying about being undisguised while he was with his two companions, but he still didn't want to risk being seen by someone else.

Once the contact was carefully set in his lap, his hand came up again, claws digging in his eye socket. Both Gaz and Dib stared, with mild curiosity and awed horror respectively, as he pulled the magenta orb out of its orbit and held it up, turning his head to shoot a look at the humans with his remaining eye, a smug, clearly pleased expression on his face.

"What do you have to say _now_ , Dib-thing?" He boasted, lifting his chin and allowing a note of pride to filter in his voice. "Witness the superiority of Irken physiology, you primitive Earth monkeys!"

"Are they synthetic implants?" The girl asked, tilting her head a bit. Her eyes followed the line of the weird, thick thread, which had to be a plait of both tendons and nervous fibres, that still connected the eye to the socket. She hated to admit it, but she was reluctantly impressed.

"Yes and no. For the most, they are organic, genetically engineered and enhance just as the rest of our bodies, but we get subcutaneous implants added immediately after we report for duty, after the hatching," Zim explained, the proud note still well audible in his tone. He was clearly bathing in the interested attention he was getting. "You puny humans can only dream of such an amazing level of mighty progress and perfection!"

"Come on, space boy. Stop glorifying yourself and…put it back," Dib stepped in, rolling his own eyes in annoyance at the alien's boasting. His expression clearly told that he was both creeped out and fascinated by the sight of his nemesis holding his own orb as if it was the most normal thing in the world. "If you want to show use something…cool about your anatomy, why not…your hands? I mean, I never saw them without gloves!"

Gaz snorted at his words, turning her head back to her game. She was ready to be that the older teen had already taken mental note of every word the Invader had spoken about his eyes and that he would have asked more about them later. However, he also seemed to be eager to exploit their green companion's current willingness to get his hands, even _literally_ , on as much information as he could, which meant that she would have had to bear the two morons comparing human and Irken biology for the rest of her lunch break.

Still, she couldn't help herself and glanced up when Zim scoffed at the request, but still started to pull off his left glove. On one thing Dib was right. None of them had ever seen the alien's hands uncovered. Or any other part of his body, as a matter of fact. Even when he had got wet, or burnt or covered with some other harmful substance, the Invader had never taken off his uniform to attempt to get rid of it. According to her brother, it had to have something to do with his culture, but she wouldn't have put the fact that he had never thought of attempting such a move past Zim.

Three green fingers were waved in the air for a moment after the thick material of the glove was removed, but they were snatched away before the girl could have got a better look at them. Not that she would have cared to have one, since this was hardly as creepy and exotic as eyes that could be pulled out. However, her gaze automatically followed the movement and she found herself raising an eyebrow imperceptibly at the sight of Dib poking and brushing the hand and bending every joint, in a way that was clearly meant to be analytical, but that instead came off as mostly _greedy_. She bit back another half-disgusted scoff. That had to be one of her sibling's wet dreams coming true, finally getting the chance to prod a more or less willing alien as much as he could without involving operation tables and vivisections. And it wasn't just any alien either. No wonder that his amber eyes were literally _sparkling_.

Zim, on his part, didn't seem to be sharing the older teen's enthusiasm. He had looked amused and proud at the way Dib's gaze had initially lit up with evident fascination, but all that insistent and overeager touching had to be making him uncomfortable, and Gaz couldn't blame him. The mere sight of it was _disturbing_ , she couldn't even imagine how being the target of it had to feel.

"Dib-pig! Hey! Cease it this instant. All that prodding and touching and rubbing is creepy!" The Irken finally exclaimed, since the boy seemed to be nowhere near being done. He tried to pull his arm back, but he just obtained to have the human tightening his grip and glaring at him. "It's Zim's hand the one you're poking with your filthy fingers! You transferred enough of your stinky germs. Give it back now! Obey to your future overlord!"

"I'm not your slave, alien scum," Dib shot back without missing a beat. His eyes briefly touched the Invader's before going back to the hand he was holding captive. "And you should really shut up. You're the one who loves sticking things inside me for your freaky experiments. You've done that for _years_. I have all the rights to be a bit thorough since the roles are reversed for once!"

The alien let out an irritated clicking noise, but Gaz quickly cut him off before he could translate it in anything comprehensible to a human. The discussion that would have been born if she had allowed him to formulate his sentence would have been endless and she had no intention of watching it degenerate in a mess of screeching and yelling.

"Seriously, Dib? I'm trying to eat here," she pointed out, gesturing towards her half eaten lunch, but keeping her eyes on the display. Her tone, though, didn't convey any of the distaste her words seemed to imply and instead it was openly mocking. "No innuendos. That's disgusting."

"G-Gaz!" Dib spluttered, caught off guard by the comment. His grip on the Irken's hand loosened, which allowed the latter to finally break free, and he glared even harder at the girl because of that. "What the hell! That wasn't…You know that I didn't mean it like _that_!"

She shrugged, untouched by the heat of the embarrassed raged she was currently been addressed. "Don't get your panties in a twist, Dib. He didn't get it anyway. As per usual."

The older teen threw his hands in the air. "That's not the point! And you know that too. Didn't I ask you to stop it? Like a thousand times?! You're my _sister_!"

Once again she didn't even care to look up. "Unfortunately for me I am. And with that?"

"Hey! I did get it instead!" Zim stepped in, clearly not liking how the two humans had started to talk to each other as if he hadn't been there. "Of course I did! I might not know all your human phrasing, but I'm not a brainless idiot! She doesn't want to hear references to hideous experiments during her foodening time. That's what she said."

Gaz's expression turned, if possible, even more unimpressed. As soon as she had seen the Irken opening his mouth, she had known that he would have proved her point perfectly. "There you go, Dib," she claimed, and this time there was a spark of satisfied amusement in her voice. "Also, remember what I say about the forever-a-virgin thing?"

Dib groaned and brought a hand to his face. "Just…Shut up, Gaz, okay? Please?"

The girl smirked openly, even if her expression was half-covered by her hair as she lowered her head again towards the console. She felt the Invader shifting next to him, most likely because of how irritated he had got about not being able to follow the conversation, and a moment later she found a bare green had stuck under her nose. She blinked, finding herself forced to look up again, this time against her will.

"There, Gaz-sister," Zim claimed, with the tone of someone who was making a huge concession. "You must be curious about Zim's superior body too. Just don't be as prod-y as the Dib has been, or you'll never get another chance."

"As if I cared about getting one," was her comeback, but she still took the limb she was offered.

She made a quick work of studying it, her touched being truly clinical as her brother's should have been. It was curious how soft and smooth the skin was, even the one that cover the claws, but at the same time the bones and whatever other structure there was under it, maybe something similar to an exoskeleton, were hard and definitely more resistant than any human tissue. She found nothing cutting though, which most likely meant that the Irken had to be somehow able to turn his fingers into sharp blades at will. It was the only explanation. She had seen the gashes they had left on Dib's flesh many times after all.

"You have the most mobile joints ever and yet you _suck_ at gaming," she commented in the end, dropping the hand once she had satisfied her very small curiosity. "I don't get how that's possible."

"Zim doesn't suck!" The Invader protested instantly, offense replacing the proud hint in his voice, but she simply ignored him in favour of picking up another bite of her steak, knowing that the sight of the meat would have shut him up. If now the two had allowed her to finish her meal in peace, perhaps she would have admitted to herself that her lunch break hadn't been completely ruined.

 **╔ IZ ╗**

"Oh, come on! Not again!" Dib complained as his fourth attempt at opening the door of the eerie green building failed. He was sure to have punched in the correct codes and yet the system kept giving him an error signal. There was just one explanation for it and the idea made his irritation deepen even more, because it was the third time it happened that week.

"Computer! Zim changed the access codes _again_ , didn't he?" He exclaimed loudly, even if he didn't need to yell to have the machine hearing him. "How paranoid can that stupid alien be! And how am I supposed to keep up with his crap if he doesn't notify me?!"

Gaz rolled her eyes from where she was standing next to him. For once, the console she was holding was turned off, but she was starting to seriously consider immersing herself in her game and shutting that umpteenth show of idiocy out. She had agreed to come to the launch only because Dib had mentioned that there was the slightest chance that Earth could have been sent rushing around the solar system like a pierced balloon if something went wrong. Her brother had then reassured her that he had taken all the precautions and all the calculations and the procedures were correct, but she had still chosen not to be on the planet. After all, as their father always said, every great experiment held, inherent in itself, the risk of turning into a disaster. Moreover, if the the worst-case scenario happened, she wouldn't have missed the sight of it for the world. Quite literally.

"You have no idea!" The Computer's voice cheerfully answered in that moment, distracting her from her thoughts. "Before you two started to work together, he randomised all the codes at least four times per day. Now he does only once a day. And it's all for your sake."

"I'm touched," Dib grumbled sarcastically under his breath as the machine made the lock click, allowing them to finally step inside. A few steps away from the door, a platform was already ready to take them down to the teleporter room. "Thanks. I'll need to have a word with him about that."

"Good luck. You'll need it!" Was the clearly amused answer that echoed in the room, before the two humans were sucked down in the depths of the building.

Gaz mentally cursed the tubes of the Invader's transport system and their mad speed velocity, but she still managed to plant her feet wide enough not to stumble too evidently when the lift came to its abrupt stop. Dib, instead, hadn't been so prudent, despite the fact that he should have known the place as much as his own room by now, and he almost ended up face down on the floor. She watched him barely managing to catch himself before it was too late, swearing under his breath against the base and against its owner. She huffed out a breath, walking past him to go standing on the teleport platform. Some things would have never changed.

Her sibling's grumbling went on as he tried and failed to activate the device and was eventually forced to ask for the Computer's assistance once again. The machine seemed happy to comply, even if she was ready to bet that it was more out of the amusement it felt for how helpless and frustrated Dib was than because it truly desired to be helpful. Not that she cared. Whatever floated its boat was fine with her, as long as it made them waste less time.

A second after the older teen had joined her on the platform, a ray of blinding light enveloped their figures and, in the blink of an eye, they found themselves in the Station transporter room, completed with a grumpy alien who had to have been tapping his foot impatiently for quite a while, judging by how tensed his shoulders were and how tightly crossed his arms were.

"Where were you?!" Zim attacked them, even if his magenta orbs had instantly locked on the scythe-haired boy, as per usual hardly sparing a glance in the girl's direction. He knew better than addressing his irritation at her, also because he didn't doubt that, whatever the reason of the delay was, it was all his nemesis's fault. It was a line of thought that Gaz approved and that was why she didn't even consider taking offence at the lack of greeting. The less she was involved in their constant fights, the better.

"I was trying to get past your front door, alien scum!" Dib shot back, his voice quickly heating up, the annoyance in his tone matching the Irken's. "Don't blame me, but your stupid paranoia! How am I supposed to reach you, if you keep changing those cursed codes?!"

Zim's face contracted and, for a moment, he looked at loss of words, but then he turned his head on one side and scoffed loudly. "You could have immediately asked the Computer to let you in. Don't throw the blame that belongs to your stubbornness on the mighty Zim, Dib-stink." And without waiting for an answer, he turned on his heels and marched out of the room.

The older teen let out a low grow and threw his hands in the air. "I hate him _so_ much!" He hissed out, but he still hurried after the alien, whether it was to insult him, discuss some last-minute detail before the launch or simply because he couldn't stay away. Knowing her brother, it had to be a mix of the three things, but Gaz didn't spare much thought on the matter. She just hoped that they wouldn't have kept fighting. The sooner they put themselves to work, the sooner she could have gone back to her life and finally have a few hours away from the duo.

The light echo of her steps bounced among the metal of the Station walls, accompanying her towards her destination. She had to admit, at least to herself, that she envied Zim for having a place that was an almost inaccessible fortress at his disposal. While it was true that no one dared to disturb her, aside from Dib, especially when she locked herself up in her room, the sounds of the world still haunted her and the only way she had to shut them up was to keep the volume of her music and games as loud as possible. Up there, instead, such a thing wouldn't have been necessary because she could have literally shut the planet out and stayed away from it.

Gaz pondered asking Zim to grant access to the Station to her too, as she walked past the threshold of the control room. She had shared _her_ spot with him, so it would have been just fair. Besides, she doubted that the alien would have dared to deny her. A sly smirk touched her lips for a split second, distending her frown. Perhaps having found herself more or less unwillingly associated with the space moron had very few positive sides, after all.

She hardly spared a look at where the Irken and her brother were standing near one of the consoles, fighting for the control of the keyboard, and instead she headed towards the huge glass window that opened at the bottom of the room. Earth was visible past the transparent thick barrier, white clouds twirling in the atmosphere, partially covering the flashes of green, brown and blue that lay underneath them. The girl rested a hand on the cool material, her amber eyes opening almost completely. She had never been interested in any kind of sightseeing, but it was hard not to stare. The planet was beautiful, seen from space, there was no denying it. The fact, though, just made her wonder even more why a place that seemed to have so much potential had allowed a race of chronic idiots to take over. Had she been the Earth, she would have dumped mankind's stupid ass into a volcano a long time before.

"Awww, it's Mary's sister!" GIR exclaimed cheerfully from where he was pressing his face against the glass, not really bothering to turn his head in her direction. "You here to see the biiiig arc thingie going off? Did you bring _gummy_ pop corns?"

Gaz's face instantly morphed back into a scowl at the gleeful greeting and she crossed her arms over her chest, keeping her gaze ahead. "Try to hug me…or touch me in any other way, and I'll make _you_ go off with Zim's machine," she warned, making sure to sound as scary as she could, even if she had learnt a long time before that it didn't work on the crazy robot. "And I won't dance with you again this time either, so don't even ask."

The SIR Unit let out a disappointed sound at her statements, but he didn't seem perturbed by her show of hostility. "That's too bad. It was fun!" He whined, his voice now sounding very sad, but a moment later he was shrugging and pulling something that looked like a package of peanuts out of his head. "Maybe next time then!"

"Don't hold your breath…" Was her muttered answer, but she still accepted a handful of the snacks she was being offered, munching on them loudly for a moment before turning to glance at where her two other companions were still bent over a display. "So? Did you bring me here to bore me to death or do you have a machine to launch for real?"

"You can't rush science, Gaz," Dib stated with an irritable huff in the same moment when Zim exclaimed, not without a hint of annoyance: "Greatness needs time, human!"

The girl raised an unimpressed eyebrow as she watched them glancing at each other, with a hint of surprise, and as, immediately after, matching, idiotically satisfied grins opened on their face before the two went back to whatever they had been doing, with less elbowing and fighting. If someone had told her, a few years back, that this would have become her life, she would have killed them slowly and painfully for having even just imagined such an idiocy. Now that it had happened, she would have still murdered them horribly, but for a whole different reason.

She shook her head and turned back towards the glass, just in time to see that something was _finally_ happening. A portion of the lower structure of the Station had opened and the filter was slowly being brought out by a few robotic units. The ozone hole was just ahead of them and the device seemed to be heading there, the green light of nuclear reactor shining brightly against the eternal darkness of space. Gaz couldn't help staring at the immense machine, while GIR let out an awed squeal next to her. It was… _impressive_ , even if she would have never said it out aloud.

She shot another look at the working pair, finding that they had separated. Zim was carefully moving a few levers, most likely manoeuvring the arc in position, while Dib was in front another screen, fingers flying on the alien keyboard as if they had belonged there, his eyes hidden by the light reflecting on the large lenses of his glasses. At the sight of serious focus and determined confidence both their expressions bore, a thought suddenly struck her, mostly against her will. _Maybe_ Earth had a chance with those two, against all the odds.

"Careful now," the older teen called out, as the filter hoovered less than a metre above the highest level of the atmosphere. "If you position it just a centimetre away from where it should be, then…"

"Then your stupid planet will blow up like a pierced balloon. Yes, yes. Zim knows this!" The Irken shot back, moodily cutting him off. He didn't look happy to have had his focus broken and his claws tightened on the levers. "I'm an Irken soldier, I know how to operate my own tech! Shut your stinky trap, Dib-worm, or I'll blow up this ball of dirt on purpose!"

"Touchy," Dib muttered under his breath, and Gaz couldn't help agreeing with him. Her gaze focused fully on the alien and she didn't miss how _nervous_ he looked, for lack of a better word. His shoulders were tense, his eyes narrowed, his teeth gritted and she would have been ready to swear that there was the hint of a few drops of sweat on his forehead. Despite the irritable, unwavering confidence he was showing, Zim had to be at least a bit worried about his performance.

The girl kept eyeing him for a moment before moving her attention back to the filter, which was now swaying up and down, as the alien tried to lock it in the right spot. Dib's voice echoed in the room a few times, carrying instructions that were met by annoyed clicks but that were still followed precisely. Gaz munched on a few more peanuts, wondering if she should have pushed the two idiots away from the console and fixed the thing herself. It was public knowledge that she was much better than them both put together when it came to using joysticks and she would have gladly positioned their stupid machine in its place herself, if it would have meant cutting her wait short.

However, before she could start to seriously consider the idea, she heard Dib clapping his hands from behind her, instantly followed by another of Zim' clicks, which sounded much more satisfied than the previous. A moment later the robotic units were detaching themselves from the filter, leaving the task to keep it floating to the antigravitational devices welded to its structure.

"Took you long enough," she commented with a scoff as both her brother and the alien joined her in front of the window. "So, no blowing the world up this time?"

"We will see that in a moment, Gaz-sister," Zim answered distractedly, keying in something on the odd device he was holding. Right above the small keyboard he was using, there was a big, flashy red button that seemed to be begging to be pressed. One of the Irken's antennae perked up as he raised his head. "GIR, come here. I promised, didn't I?"

"Yeeeeeeees, you _diiiid_!" The robot screeched in excitement, far too loudly for all the other occupants of the room, and hurried to detach himself from the glass, rushing past the two humans and tearing the remote control out of his master's hands.

"Zim, are you sure that it's…wise?" Dib asked, clearly trying and failing to keep the horror out of his voice. Pressing a button was an innocent and simple task, but this was GIR they were talking about. "I thought that you'd have activated the filter yourself?"

The Invader waved a hand. "Don't fret, Dib. I designed that thing to deactivate itself as soon as the button is pressed the first time. So, no matter how many times he presses it, no harm will be done." He shrugged. "Besides, you should know how GIR is. I had to promise him something to keep him from tampering with my…our work."

Gaz smirked slightly at the strangled noise that left her sibling's throat as the SIR Unit let out another stream of loud, incomprehensible noises before starting to hit the button so quickly and violently that the device disintegrated itself in less than thirty seconds, leaving the robot giggling madly as he pirouetted mid-air. The Irken simply rolled his eyes, clearly unfazed by his sidekick's mad show, and instead kept his eyes on the filter, pushing the girl to return her gaze in that direction too. The reactor on the top of the arc had begun to shine more and more brightly as the energy was directed to the huge turbines, starting their rotation. The moment of truth had come.

For the next ten seconds everyone in the room, even GIR, went still, gazes locked on the machine, the sense of anticipation rising more and more as the filter slowly but steadily powered up. Gaz was pretty sure that they were all expecting to see the Earth being shot out of its orbit, even if neither Zim nor Dib would have admitted it. Someone let out a small gasp when the air all around the turbines shook and then, a moment later, the reactor sent out a bright ray of blinding light, before its green glowed stabilised once again, leaving the device quietly functioning and stirring the planet's atmosphere without sending it flying into the sun.

"Uh. I didn't blow up in our faces," Dib commented, sounding almost incredulous and breaking the stunned silence by expressing everyone's thoughts. "And it seems to be…working. Computer?"

"Filter active and functioning!" The machine replied in a tone that Gaz wouldn't have hesitated to label as "festive", despite the mocking hue it carried. "I'd say that it's a miracle."

"Shut up, you both!" Zim stepped in, annoyance blooming in his voice. However, the girl didn't miss the badly concealed relief the Invader was struggling to hide either. " _Of course_ it works. _Zim_ built it! This machine couldn't have turned out as anything less than utterly _amazing_. I don't understand why you had even the slightest doubt about the success of my plan!"

"If I hadn't corrected your calculations, the risk of blowing up the planet would have been up to 45 percent, space boy," Dib pointed out, in an exasperated tone. "Or have you already forgotten that? Almost one chance out of two. I wouldn't call that amazing."

" _SILENCE_!" The Irken screeched, pointing a finger towards the older teen, clearly displeased with the comeback he had been addressed. "I won't allow you to spread your filthy _lies_ in the moment of _my_ celebration, worm child! This is a _victory_! One step closer to the day when I will rule on the mightiest empire the universe has ever known! You will _not_ ruin it for me with your stupid, senseless, stinky words."

The scowl that was contracting his features deepened for a moment, before relaxing slightly as he turned his gaze back towards the open space before them. "However," he resumed, a hint of reluctance crawling among the annoyance. "Zim can't deny that the Dib's contribution has been…not devoid of worth and usefulness." Then his voice seemed to regain a bit of firmness. "But this is just one more reason why you should be cheering and not shooting me down, stink beast. This victory is _yours_ too! Be happy with it."

This time Gaz openly rolled her eyes when a huge shit-eating smile opened on her brother's face at those words. Of course the moron would have been both smug and happy about the reluctant praise. He had just managed to make both his nemesis admit his value and his crush compliment him. It killed two birds with a stone. What she wasn't expecting to see was what her idiotic sibling did next.

"Oh, so you recognised that I'm not that useless and ignorant!" The older teen teased, leaning in a bit and bumping his shoulder playfully against Zim's. "I told you that you'd have needed me, space boy. Seems like I was right." And, before the alien could open his mouth to talk back, he reached out and flicked the closest antennae to him.

The Irken instantly went rigid at the touch, magenta eyes widening so much that it had to be painful and his head whipping jerkily towards his former rival once again. "What…Did you…You…" He sputtered out, incredulous, before his orbs filled with a burning mix of fury and embarrassment. "You filthy creature! How did you _dare_?! You know well what…Ah! I swear to the Tallest, Dib-worm, if you do something of the sort ever again, I will tear you open and decorate my Santa tree with your insides and use that gargantuan skull of yours as a…"

No one ever got to hear what the Invader was planning to do with Dib's head because, before he could finish his tirade, said human quickly moved his hand forward and flicked the appendage a second time, causing the alien to cut himself off and to let out an enrage, piercing scream instead. His PAK legs shot out a second later, causing the smirk on the scythe-haired boy's face to quickly turned into an alarmed expression.

"Shit," Dib muttered, before jumping backwards to avoid the metallic limb that had shot towards him and breaking into a run, chased by an openly murderous Irken. "Come on, Zim! I was just messing with you! _Gaz_!"

"You put yourself in troubles, Dib. Now you get yourself out of them," the girl answered with the most non-caring of tones, leaning her back against the glass and making herself comfortable. She stole another handful of peanuts from GIR and popped a couple in her mouth, showing that she would have just stayed there and watched as her sibling was torn apart, intending to fully enjoy such show. "You asked for it."

The SIR Unit giggled madly from where he was twirling in the air next to her, clearly even more enthusiastic than she was about the ongoing fight. Gaz eyed the robot carefully, not wanting him to accidentally hit her head with his waving limbs, but after a few moments he seemed to calm down a bit and settled next to her, a wide grin spread on his face.

"I haven't seen the master so happy since before the _bad_ void took over him," GIR chirped, teal eyes sparkling with childish delight. "Now it's starting to fade and my master won't be sad anymore. It's a goodie thingie. I really hated that not-fun, doomy void. But I knew that the Big-Head Boy would have helped. And he did!"

Despite herself, the girl couldn't help staring at the crazy sidekick as he spoke. She wasn't sure if he realised it or not, but the words he had just spoken not only made sense, but showed an incredibly deep understanding of Zim's situation, one she hadn't thought the robot could be capable of. GIR had always struck her as airy, dumb and a bit psychotic, but now she found herself forced to wonder if she hadn't been wrong about him too. Perhaps there was more to his odd, deranged mind.

Blinking slightly, she moved her eyes back towards the fighting duo. Zim's back was pressed against one of consoles and he had wrapped one of his PAK legs around Dib's waist, trying to shove him off. The older teen was clearly having a very hard time to keep his position, also because he was holding another metallic limb with one hand, to avoid being stabbed, and Zim's wrist with the other. His face was turned on one side, in the desperate attempt to keep it away from the Irken's still free claws. They were hissing out curses and insults at each other, none of them willing to give in.

At a superficial look, they didn't look _happy_ in that moment, especially considering that the Invader's eyes were still sparkling with murderous intents, but Gaz wasn't just some random passer-by. She could see the lessened tension in her brother's stance and she could tell that the Invader wasn't trying that hard to shove Dib away or to hurt him. If he had been, that battle would have been over already. There was a weird balance in the way their bodies uncoordinatedly pushed and pulled at each other, the same that she had spotted more and more often in their interactions in the last couple of weeks. It was already starting to take deep roots, held together by a mix of hatred, pain, frustration, messed up past history, subconscious parallels and the unacknowledged, desperate, shared need to reach out for someone who could truly _understand_.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but you're right. They really deserve each other," she stated with a small huff, but her gaze filled with determination. Just that morning she had reminded herself that she wanted to stay out of the more personal aspects of that messed up relationship, but the morons had ended up pushing her buttons so much that she had changed her mind. She would have given them a push, one strong enough to set things on the right path, and then, hopefully, they and their idiocy would have left her alone. "And I'll tell you more. It's time that they realise it."

* * *

Guess who's late with their posting schedule again. Yep, me. The days at the end of my exam session have been far busier than I had planned, and my first week of lessons has been...exhausting. I need to relearn how to manage all the rhythms. So, once again, I'm sorry for the delay. However, I've already started the next chapter and it should be up in two weeks, since I have some spare time coming. Hopefully there'll be no delays this time!

I'll keep it short because I have tons of things to do, but I wanted to say that I LOVED writing this chapter. I've been wanting to write something from Gaz's prospective for a while and I finally reached the right point to do it! I plan to give her more of this in the second arc of the story, but for now I hope you enjoyed reading her POV as much as I liked writing it! ^^ I swear, Zim and Dib are even more ridiculous seen from her eyes xD

Anyway, I'll leave you now. Thanks to everyone for being so patient with me. I know I've been a bad author recently because I still haven't replied to all the comments you left me =.=" But I read them, I swear, and they have been cheering me up in this rough spot! So, thank you for all the love everyone has been sending me. I truly appreciate it!  
In particular, a virtual hug to all my reviewers! Seriously, guys, I mean it. Your comments help my day A LOT. Thank you.

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcomed and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


	37. Chapter 37

"I still don't understand why you brought me to this establishment," Zim commented from where he was standing outside of the changing room, loud enough for its occupant to hear him. His antennae were twitching in mild irritation under his wig and he kept shooting wary glances at the humans that moved around the shop. Most of them were females and they seemed to be very excited about the merchandise that the place sold. _Far_ too excited, for the alien's liking.

Gaz's head made an appearance from behind the curtain, wearing a murderous glare. "How _thick_ can you be?" She hissed out irritably and she would have probably reached out to punch him in the face, if she hadn't been in the middle of stripping. "I told you _thrice_ already, moron, so make sure that this is the last time I have to repeat myself, or you'll regret it."

With another glare and a huff she disappeared back inside the changing room, but she kept on talking. "My band is holding a concert the day after tomorrow, and, as a new member, I'm required to bring at least a couple of people. I'm taking you and Dib and there is _no way_ that I'm letting you come dressed like _that_."

The Invader glanced down at his uniform, his mouth curling downwards. The first time the girl had made that statement, he had asked what was wrong with it and he had gained, as a reply, an extremely painful jab in the spooch and a few insults about how his usual clothing was anything but appropriated for the occasion. In the aftermath, he had still been unconvinced by her words, but the hit had been bad enough to persuade him to shut up and let the human have it her way.

"Zim knows that. What I don't understand is why you haven't let me do my researches on human concert fashion and produce my own outfit at my base. It would have spared me the troubles of coming along to this hideously _perfumy_ place," he pointed out, still unwilling to let the matter go. "If you felt like sharing my amazing company, we could have stayed at your house and gamed. There was no need for this…shopping trip."

"Don't make me smash your insides again," Gaz threatened from behind the curtain. A few rustles were heard as she hanged her usual clothes and fixed the ones she was considering to buy. "I don't trust you to come up with _anything_. Who knows what kind of weird, _wrong_ things you might have found, through your so called "researches". You will _not_ ruin this night for me." She pushed the drape away, stepping out. "I'm _not_ ecstatic to have to bear your complaining ass all morning, but this way I can supervise what you're going to wear and make sure that you don't fuck up as per usual." Her hands brushed her sides slightly and her voice lost a bit of his hostility. "So, how does this one look?"

The Irken bit his tongue to prevent himself from talking back at the accusations she had thrown him. He was also strongly tempted to point out that she was asking his opinion immediately after she had plainly stated that he couldn't dress up by himself, but he swallowed that comment too, for the sake of his spooch. Besides, he had to admit that having the girl doing the job for him allowed him to avoid wrecking his head over the umpteenth _confusing_ human custom.

His disguised eyes moved up and down along Gaz's figure, scanning every bit of the cloth she had put on. Even after so many years spent on that planet, he still hadn't adapted to the marked differences that existed between females and males when it came to humans. Among Irkens, the main dissimilarities between the genders were the different form of their antennae and the presence of eyelashes in female individuals. For the rest, their bodies had the same shapes and anatomical structure, to the point that it would have been _impossible_ to tell someone's sex without having a look at their head.

He tilted his head on one side. With humans, instead, it was a whole other story. Until they were smeets, the differences weren't too pronounced, to the point that Zim had had, especially at first, some difficulties to tell the gender of whatever ape he was interacting with. However, as they grew older, the whole bone structure tended to change, making it impossible to mistake a female for a male, at least in most cases. Now, looking at Gaz, he couldn't help comparing her to the other human he knew by memory. She had curves, with wider hips and chest, which made her waist look thinner than it truly was, where Dib was all straight lines, almost a rectangle. Her limbs were thinner, with less muscles, which seemed absurd, since she was stronger than the older teen. The features of her face were less sharp, rounder where his nemesis had more angles, and in general the lines of her body were less hard than the boy's.

His eyes narrowed, a pondering look appearing on his face. The dress she was currently wearing, with the soft but close-fitting purplish corset underlining the not outstanding but still present forms of her torso, just made all those dissimilarities even more evident in the alien's eyes. He reached out, fixing the thin, black voile that covered the most superficial layer of her skirt. It was incredibly how many _useless_ decorations that outfit had. Laces and zippers that had no other aim if not adorning the surface of the dress. Thicker straps of cloth that ran all over it, drawing thin patterns that looked like spiderwebs. Moreover, he couldn't make sense of why the skirt had so many layers, nor the reason of the leather straps that left the upper hem of the dress reached her neck and wrap around it.

The Invader bit back a scoff. Human fashion was incredibly _weird_ , he decided, even if he had to admit that that particular outfit fitted Gaz. It gave her an aura of elegant danger, which wasn't ruined by the two black vampire pigs-themed ribbons she had applied at the sides of her head. She looked taller too, thanks to the thick sole of the leather combat boots that she was wearing and that cut right under her knees, leaving a strip of naked skin between their edge and the end of the skirt. They had several metal bordered straps adorning them and he couldn't help wondering if wearing specific alloys on clothes had some kind of significance in the human culture too.

"This is definitely better than the other one," he finally answered, laconically, abandoning his observation in favour of glancing up at the girl's face.

Gaz fidgeted slightly with her skirt, turning to shoot a critical glance at the body-length mirror set between the two changing rooms. "I hate to say it, but you were right about the shorter skirt. I can show off my boots with it. And it's much more comfortable." Her hands briefly touched her bare shoulders, before tightening the leather collar a bit. "Now I just need another studded bracelet to go with the rings I have at home and I'm done. But I'll take care of that when we get to the other shop." She shot the alien a meaningful look. "Now it's _your_ turn."

"I'm not wearing anything close to _that_ ," Zim readily shot back, gesturing towards the human's dress. Even if it looked good on her, it didn't mean that he liked it. "All those…lacy thingies and crochet don't fit well with my Irken pride."

At this answer, the girl's face morphed into one of the most unimpressed looks he had ever seen. "This is an outfit for _girls_ , you space idiot," she pointed out, her tone even flatter then her expression. "So, unless I've been wrong on one big detail for all these years, I won't ask you to wear anything of the sort. Well, unless _you_ decide that you'd like to wear a dress." She shrugged and shot a meaningful look at the Invader's uniform. "It wouldn't be a first. Whatever floats your boat. Luckily we're not in the Middle Age anymore."

The Irken spluttered a bit, realising the huge slip he had just made. "Zim…knows that! Of course I'm not _that_ ignorant about your puny fashion! I was just…uh, saying," he tried, but his companion's expression didn't change at all, showing that they were both aware of the fact that he was lying and doing a very poor job at it. "I…Hey! It's not my fault if you humans have so many weird habits when it comes to clothing! We Irkens have uniforms that are the same for everyone who has a certain rank. Even the _Tallest_ have a uniform that's always the same. The only thing that can change are the colours. It's much more…functional. You can immediately tell what one's job and status are. So, don't blame _me_ when it's your filthy, idiotic clothing habits that are _stupid_!" He then balled his fists by his side. "And what is that supposed to mean?! Zim has no floating boat!"

"I don't know who's worse between you and my brother. You both must really _love_ the sound of your voices," Gaz commented in a harsh tone, dismissing everything that Zim had just said. Instead, she collected her clothes from the changing room and moved past him, grabbing the still fuming alien by the arm and dragging him towards another section of the shop. "Don't try my patience too hard by being picky. You'll regret it. I promise."

Zim muttered a click under his breath, not daring to curse in English at the sight of the deep frown that had settled on the human's face. He simply allowed her to shove him in front of a selection of T-shirts and then followed her with his gaze as she went off to retrieve what looked like sleeveless jackets. His fake violent eyes moved back to the many different designs set in front of him and he picked up a random one, rubbing his gloved hands distractedly on the cloth.

"Gaz-sister, tell Zim something," he started once the girl had come back to him, carrying the different alternatives of clothing she had picked. His gaze remained in front of him for a few moments, moving rapidly among the many colours and shapes printed on the T-shirts, before he turned to look down at her boots and then up to her face. "Do you think that we can get some of those metallic thingies you intend to wear for me too?"

 **╔ IZ ╗**

 _Weird_. That had been the first word that had popped in his head as soon as the soles of his boots had touched the foreign ground and it had kept echoing in his mind, getting louder and louder, as he had entered the residential area. The air smelled weird, and _not_ in a pleasant way. Most of the buildings were weird, and kind of _ugly_ too. The vegetation too looked weird, and _not_ very healthy either. And the _people_ …Those were perhaps the _weirdest_ element. Together with the incredible amount of dirt and junk that was spread all around him.

Skoodge tagged at the hem of the large dark brown folding hat that was hiding his antennae and glanced around quickly through the thick lenses of the sunglass he was wearing, to make sure that no one was watching, before activating the device bound to his right wrist. According to the small virtual map it projected, he should have been just a few minutes away from his destination and he honestly couldn't wait to get there. Earth was undoubtedly a _curious_ place, but he wasn't sure that he liked it. Deep down, he was glad that he hadn't been the one assigned to that planet. Blorch had been openly _terrifying_ , with his deserted inhospitable lands and his bloodthirsty rat people, but the world he was currently visiting was much _creepier_ , in a subtle disquieting way he couldn't really put into focus. Everything around him just made him want to speed up his steps so that he could get off the streets.

A hint of relief blossomed in his chest when, finally, he caught the sigh of a short green construction, at the end of the umpteenth cul-de-sac. The building looked a bit out of place with his brighter colours and smaller size, especially compared to the two dark houses that stood at its sides. His training almost made him raise an eyebrow, but he knew that such distinctiveness wasn't a problem. Apparently, at least according to what he had been able to grasp from the information Zim had sent him, the inhabitants of that planet were tall but pretty _dumb_ , with very few exceptions, which was something quite inconceivable for an Irken mind. However, he had been on several planets and met many aliens during his mission, and he had learnt quickly that height, despite what his PAK instincts told him, was hardly something that mattered, at least outside the Empire's hierarchy.

Skoodge quickened his steps even more, almost breaking into a run, and slowed down only when he had reached the fence. The base too had an eerie atmosphere that fitted the general one, but the Invader would have taken his former fellow soldier's odd residence and its scary outside decorations over every other creepy thing around there. At least the place gave him a sense of _familiarity_ , since he could recognise the lines of Irken technology in its odd shapes.

His eyes warily lingered on the garden gnomes and their blank stares, which now were all fixed on him, and then crossed the threshold carefully. He was pretty sure that Zim's security system wouldn't have attacked someone who bore the DNA of his race, but you could never be too careful when his former roommate was involved. There were _precedents_ to testify that his worries weren't unfounded. Luckily, though, his assumption was correct and, while those spooky white orbs followed him till the door, giving him the chills, no hostile action was taken against him.

Skoodge shot them one last, brief look and then straightened his hat a bit, looking around for something that would have allowed him to ring the bell. He found nothing of the sort, so, after having hesitated for one split moment, he raised his fist and rapped on the door.

Dib lifted his eyes from the screen of his laptop as the knocking sound echoed in the living room, mixing with the music that was coming from the TV. He had been spending his morning sprawled on his former rival's couch, waiting for Zim to get back from wherever Gaz had decided to take him. He had tried to inquire on their destination, but all he had got had been a menacing growl from his sister and the alien telling him to mind his own business. He was _almost_ sure that the only reason why his ally hadn't answered him was because the girl had told him to keep his mouth shut. The nervous glances that the Irken had been shooting in her direction as he had addressed him those words had seemed to confirm that hypothesis. He couldn't exactly blame him. In Zim's place, he would have done the same thing. No one with the smallest hint of self-preservation instinct would have dared to contradict a direct order from Gaz.

The human huffed out a breath and he got up, wondering who might be. The Invader wasn't exactly the kind of person who received many guests. He was pretty sure that the only person who regularly came to his nemesis's house was him himself, and his sister too, now that the she and Zim had become gaming pals, or whatever they considered themselves to be. Maybe it was a courier of some sort. He groaned. He just hoped that it wasn't some peddler hellbent on selling him stuff. Or a kid selling cookies. Those were the _worst_.

Brushing the front of his T-shirt, he headed for the door. There was a large stain of mustard near the bottom of the piece of clothing and he had to thank GIR's latest, overenthusiastic offer for that. The SIR Unit seemed to have suddenly started to _adore_ him, since when he and Zim had begun working together, and he expressed it with bone-crushing hugs, food thrown in his direction and special recipes the robot cooked just for him. Luckily, the Irken almost always came to the rescue whenever GIR tried to feed him, so for the moment he had been spared from food poisoning and from having his stomach pumped by one of the Invader's weird machinery.

On the other hand, though, he had to admit that there were positive aspects too in having gained the crazy sidekick's deepest affection. GIR never hesitated to tell him whatever Zim had been doing, whenever he caught his nemesis busy with something that he either shouldn't have done or that was embarrassing and that the alien tried to deny. Moreover, he was always offered some of the food that the SIR Unit ordered from takeaway shops, which usually meant pizza and taquitos for free. The Irken's disgusted face at the sight of them both eating _meat_ was a very welcomed added bonus.

Dib ran a hand in his hair. It was hard to tell whether that particular aspect of his new alliance with the alien was good or bad, but of one thing he was sure: he liked it much better when GIR was calmer and not screaming like an eagle or lacing on him and strangling his neck or trying to feed him food mixed with chemicals.

He shook his head as he opened the door and the half amused huffed that had been about to leave his lips got stuck in his throat at the sight of who was waiting on the other side of it. The teen's eyes widened slightly and the first thought that crossed his mind was how it was possible that the Irkens had managed to conquer so many worlds if their disguises, aside from a few exceptions, always were so awful and ineffective. The being in front of him would have _never_ passed for a human, at least to eyes that were open to consider the existence of aliens, with that stained uniform of his, the horrible pink sunglasses and that hat, which seemed to have come out of some cheap Far West-themed B-movie.

Skoodge, from his part, felt torn between surprise and a bit of reverence at the sight of the creature who came to open the door. He had expected to find Zim's familiar features, but instead his eyes were met with completely alien ones, in all senses. While this wasn't the first human he had seen in person, since he had passed quite a few on his way there, but, standing so close to one, he had to admit that the height difference was a bit _intimidating_. His mind quickly calculated that the other had to be more than one foot taller than him and, while he wasn't too close to be as tall as the Tallest, which was slightly reassuring, it was still _a lot_.

He blinked, mouth curling into an unsure expression, and then another thought struck him. What was a human doing in Zim's base, unharmed and on his own? He couldn't have been sneaking in, because otherwise he wouldn't have come to open the door. Despite what his former fellow soldier might say, he was sure that the inhabitants of the planet weren't _that_ stupid. Besides, the being didn't look like someone who had just got caught red-handed. On the contrary, despite the astonishment that had blossomed on his face, he looked fairly at ease, almost as if it had been _normal_ for him to be there.

That last thought made the Invader's confused frown deepen even more. Zim hadn't mentioned a slave or any kind of subordinate in their transmissions. Not to mention that the other Irken had always preferred working on his own and, at most, _sacrificing_ others for his goals, instead of working with them, so that he could claim all the glory for himself. And yet that would have been the most reasonable explanation for the human's presence.

The two kept staring at each other for a few more moments, both uncertain about how to break the stasis, but in the end Dib was the first to get himself together and recover a bit from the shock. Bad disguises or not, he had been offered an endless amount of evidence on how _dangerous_ Irkens could be. Given Zim's precarious situation, he had to consider the idea that the alien currently standing in front of him might have had ill intentions. No matter how unlikely it was, judging by how at loss the latter looked.

The teen opened his mouth to ask his unexpected guest whom he was and especially what he wanted, but he wasn't given the chance to speak a single syllable because, in that very moment, something grabbed him by the scythe-like lock of hair on the top of his head and pulled so hard that he was forced to step back inside the base, letting out a pained yelp.

"We have a gueeeeeesst!" GIR trilled in a high-pitched tone, letting go of the human and rushing past him, to have a better look at the sturdy Invader. His sensors had instantly matched the newcomer's molecular patterns with Irken ones, so he hadn't bothered to put on his disguise. "Hiiii! Are you a friend of my master?"

"Dammit, GIR!" Dib exclaimed from behind the SIR Unit, reaching out to grab the crazy sidekick by the arm, while still massaging his skull with his free hand. So much for caution and trying to intimidate the potential enemy. His amber eyes moved back on the unknown alien. "Hey, just…Come inside."

Skoodge blinked once again, caught off guard by the scene that had just happened before his eyes, but did as he was told. He stepped in and closed the door behind him, watching as the human struggled to dump the giggling robot back on the couch. It took him some time, because GIR had laced on his arm and seemed to have no intentions of letting go, but eventually he managed to free himself, even if not before having gained a couple of kicks in the chest.

"Stay there and…watch your show or something, okay?" The teen more or less ordered, even if he knew that the SIR Unit would have listened only if he had chosen to. Still, since GIR just let out a few more trilling sounds of excitement, but then plopped down and locked his teal eyes on the screen, he decided that it was safe enough to leave him there and to go back to take care of their unexpected guest.

Shooting one last cautious glance at the robot, he turned to face said alien again, just to find him frowning at the SIR Unit, an even more perplexed look on his half-hidden features. He could almost picture his antennae, bent downwards towards his skull under the hat.

"Uh, don't mind GIR. He is… _special_ ," he hurried to say, trying to bring the other's focus back on him. The fact that the Irken hadn't attempted anything yet gave him hope that, after all, he might not have hostile intentions, but he wasn't ready to lower his guard just yet. Keeping the newcomer on the edge was the best strategy.

"Okay, let's cut the crap. I know that you're an Irken too," he went on, in a more determined tone. He straightened his back and tensed slightly, ready to make his move in case the alien reacted badly to his next words. "There's just one thing I want to know and you've better not lie about it." He made a brief pause to let the words sink in. "Did the Tallest send you here?"

Skoodge reluctantly moved his gaze away from the clearly _faulty_ SIR Unit, still puzzled by why Zim would have chosen to keep around not just a human, but also a malfunctioning and dangerous piece of equipment. He had thought that he knew his former fellow soldier, but now he was starting to realise that, maybe, there was a lot about the other that had changed in the rotations they had spent apart. Or, perhaps, many sides of him that he had never got to see during their time together.

"What? You…You know? And…The…Tallest?" He stuttered out, finding himself caught off guard for the umpteenth time. The baffled expression on his face took a desperate hue and he found himself wondering if it was the case to get his weaponry out. The human hadn't tried to attack him, but his stance was openly hostile.

Despite himself, Dib felt a bit bad at the shift that the alien's features took at his verbal assault. The guy looked completely lost now and every doubt he had about him being a potential threat instantly dissipated as he heard the stutter in his voice. He was still wary about the reasons that might have brought the Irken to Earth, also because Zim hadn't mentioned that he was expecting a guest, but he decided that he could give the being in front of him the benefit of doubt and assume that his was a friendly visit.

"Uh, yeah. Sorry about the attack but…You can never be too sure these days," he offered in a softer tone, his body relaxing slightly. "Don't ask why I asked you _that_ , I can't tell you. Zim would kill me if I did, so…"

He hesitated, eyes darting around. He was suddenly feeling incredibly _awkward_. He had never been good at meeting new people, let alone ones who came from outer space. He wasn't even sure of how he should introduce himself. His experience with Zim had hardly prepared him on how to interact _peacefully_ with aliens.

"I'm Dib, by the way," he chose to say in the end, raising a hand in a half wave. He studied the other's expression, almost hoping for hint of recognition, but he was disappointed. If his former rival had told the Irken in front of him about Earth, he hadn't mentioned him. The thought stung a bit, but he pushed it away. It wasn't the right moment to focus on his inconvenient feelings. "Zim and I…Uh, we work together. And…You can take that stuff off. As I said, I know what you are."

Skoodge eyed the human with suspicion, not knowing what to think about his sudden change of attitude, but, when the other awkwardly offered him his name and the start of an explanation, he chose to take it as a sign of peace. He seemed to be feeling just as uncomfortable as the Invader was now. Besides, if it was true that he worked with Zim, he should have nothing to fear.

"Dib," he repeated, a click following the name. He then reached out for the hat and took it off, allowing his antennae to stretch a bit before removing the sunglasses too. Being able to see clearly made him feel instantly better.

"I'm Skoodge!" he resumed, in a brighter tone. "Zim and I have known each other since when we were smeets. We've trained together all the way up to the rank of Invader." Then his eye narrowed slightly, as part of his confusion came back. "You're helping him taking over your own planet? You must _really_ hate this place."

The human fidgeted a bit at the last observation, glancing away for a moment. The hint of _sympathy_ he had thought to have perceived in the alien's voice was a bit disconcerting. It was the last emotion he would have expected to hear from an Irken . "Things are…a bit more complicated than that," he chose to answer, knowing that he was being extremely vague. He couldn't do anything else. It would have been up to Zim to decide what to do about Skoodge . Realisation suddenly hit him, as the name echoed in his head. " _Skoodge_. Zim mentioned you to me! About your time together at the Academy. I asked him to…explain me some stuff and he briefly told me about those times."

The Invader seemed to light up again at the comment. "He did? Oh, good. I'm glad that he still thinks about those times. Even if they haven't been the best…" He commented, frowning for a moment. Then he tilted his head slightly. "I wish I could say that I have an idea of who you are but…Zim never mentioned a collaborator in his transmissions."

Dib shrugged, as to say that it didn't matter. And it shouldn't have. It was just _natural_ that his nemesis would have wanted to keep hidden the fact that he was working with an "inferior" being from the rest of his race. Aside from it not being right with the alien's pride, there were many other unpleasant and inconvenient consequences that such an admission might have brought to both them and their current plan.

"It's fine. Our…alliance is pretty new anyway. We're still trying to…figure things out," he simply replied. That was a _huge_ understatement, but there was no need to try and explain the complex dynamics of his and Zim's relationship. It would have taken for him to mention events and truths that he couldn't reveal and, besides, he wasn't sure that he would have managed to describe it properly even if he had been allowed to disclose those pieces of information. "Uh, by the way. Zim should be back soon enough. Can I offer you something? There should still be some of the waffles we ate for breakfast…"

From his spot on the couch, GIR suddenly perked up at that last statement. "The master and I made them _together_!" He exclaimed loudly, abandoning the greasy tacos he had been eating, not caring about the oily sauce that was spread all over the cushions. "You muuust try them!"

And before anyone could move or say something, he threw himself on Skoodge, dragging the startled Irken into the next room. Dib let out an exasperated groan, ready to follow them, but the front door burst open before he could even take a step and Zim marched inside the base, carrying a huge but anonymous plastic bag.

"Dib-thing!" The Invader called, much more loudly than it was necessary, considering the small dimensions of the building's ground floor. His eyes darted towards the kitchen, stopping on his nemesis's from. "Ah, there you are." His voice held a hint of both irritation and satisfaction, as if he hadn't been able to decide if having the human there annoyed or pleased him. "Your sister-unit is…" He let out a strangled click instead of finishing the sentence. "You have _no_ idea of what she has subjected me to in the last few hours!"

"Uh, Zim…" The teen tried to interject, but he was cut off because he could even start.

" _Torture_. That's what it has been! " Zim went on, completely ignoring the interruption and tearing the wig off his head. Both it and the bag were dumped on the couch as he sat on the armrest, starting to peel off his contacts. " I have Earth _decades_ of horrible, harsh training behind me, and yet this experience gave Zim horrible _duckpimples_!"

"I think you mean "goosepimples", space boy," Dib muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes slight. "But, Zim, there's…"

The Irken's antennae flattened against his skull and he let out a low, threatening growl. "Shut your filthy oral cavity, Dib-stink. I'm not done ranting!"

Dib felt his own irritation rising. It was a reflex deeply rooted inside him, fed by four years of harsh battles and mutual hatred, almost impossible to control by now. Not to mention that he felt completely entitled to get mad at the Invader's words. He was trying to tell something that the Zim would have surely liked to know, but the idiot didn't even want to listen to him. And the worst would have been that, most likely, once his former rival had realised that they had a guest, he would have got angry and accused him of not having warned him in time. He balled his fists, gritting his teeth slightly, amber eyes locking on the still rambling alien with renewed heat.

" _Zim_ _!_ " He exclaimed again, not caring about the fact that he had just cut the other off mid-sentence for the third time. "I don't care about whatever complaint you feel the need to spill in my ears! I'm trying to do you a _favour_ , so will you shut up for a second?!"

Zim's eyes narrowed even more, magenta orbs darkening with rage. "Dib," he hissed out and in the matter of a couple of seconds he had covered the small distance that separated them. One of his hands snapped up, yanking the collar of the human's T-shirt and pulling him down at his eye level, and his free claws took a hold of his nemesis's jaw, grip hard enough to hurt, but without breaking the skin. "Tell me why Zim _always_ has to listen to your babbling, even when I have better things to do or simply do _not_ want to listen, while you can simply refuse to do the same?! What's so important now?!"

The teen was a bit startled by the sudden physical aggression, but he recovered quickly, wrapping his fingers tightly around the wrist of the hand that was holding his face. He didn't try to tear it away, because he knew from experience that such an action would have just gained him three deep gashes on his cheeks, but still gripped at it firmly, as to silently tell his nemesis that he had better not to try anything. The last time the alien had scratched him, a few days before, he had dumped a basket of water over his head. Alliance or not, he wasn't going to let Zim bully him. Not more than the other had always used to do, at least.

His eyes sank straight into those deep pools that were locked on him, menacing and full of painful promises, holding them with practice ease, and a smirk curled his lips almost against his will. It was stronger than him. The taste of the adrenaline, the thrill of the fight, that dark spark that constantly ran between them, even the pain that came from the bruises he received and the hard way in which their limbs collided during their physical fights. While he was glad that he and the Irken had reached an agreement, especially considering how their situation had evolved, he had got far too addicted to their messed up interactions. It wouldn't have felt right, if they had drastically changed, no matter how much they could frustrate him at times.

"Shut up, alien scum. I have to _bear_ you endless monologues all the time too. So it's just fair that you listen to me too, from time to time," he shot back, in a taunting tone, and the sly grin on his face widened slightly at the sight of his nemesis gritting his pinkish teeth. He paused for a moment, just for the sake of keeping Zim on the edge and feeding the other's irritation, before adding: "And what I've been trying to tell since you crossed the damned threshold is that we have a _guest_. I thought that you'd have liked to know that, now, wouldn't you?"

Zim had been about to let out a snarl, in answer to the first part of Dib's speech, but the latter went on talking before he had had a chance to react and the words that followed caused his eyes to snap wide open once again. He instantly let go of his nemesis, his almost panicked gaze scanning the room for the foreign presence he had missed. Had the worm child let someone else inside _his_ base? And he had allowed him to take his disguise off even knowing that they weren't alone? He hadn't given him a chance to speak, it was true, but his former rival should have tried harder, since he had been conscious of the current threat to their plans and to his cover up. What was he supposed to do now, considering how adamant Dib was every time he suggested that they simply _disposed_ of whatever ape might have got in their way?

His agitation quickly morphed into astonishment when his magenta orbs finally landed on the kitchen door and found _Skoodge_ , of all people, standing in the threshold. The tension in his shoulders relaxed slightly and he turned to shoot a murderous look at his ally, finding that the human was now openly smirking at him, clearly satisfied with the scare he had given him. Dib waggled his eyebrows at the alien slightly, unimpressed with the threat he found in the look he was being addressed. Oh, sweet revenge.

"I hate you, Dib-stink," Zim muttered under his breath and shoved his elbow hard in the teen's ribs before turning his attention back to the other Invader. The foolish creature could laugh at him as much as he wanted, but he wouldn't have condoned such trick without taking a bit of retaliation first. However, he would have dealt with his former rival later. Now his priority was their guest.

"Skoodge. What are you doing here?" His eyes narrowed for a moment. "Did the Tallest send you?" It would have been an _odd_ choice from Red and Purple's part to have sent Skoodge to terminate him, but it was a possibility he couldn't dismiss, no matter how unlikely it might have seemed. After all, he wouldn't have put it past their leaders to have chosen that particular former fellow soldier of his to torture them both at the same time.

The sturdy Irken blinked from his spot, clinging at the small plate of waffles that GIR had handed him, as if it could have helped him not falling back into a new spiral of confusion. He had headed back in the living room as soon as he had heard the door being slammed shut, guessing that it had to be Zim and ready to greet his former roommate, but two things had stopped him. The first had been the sight of how _tall_ the other Invader had become. The last time they had seen each other, on Hobo 13, Zim had been less than half an inch taller than him, as he had always been. Now, the other had to have gained at least other _five_. Apparently he had been right when, during their first transmission, he had noticed that the other Irken had grown. It made him wonder why Zim had lied to him about it. Unless the other hadn't noticed the increase in his height yet, which was a possibility considering whom he was dealing with.

However, he would have probably got over the shock quickly, if the second thing hadn't happened, namely Zim not even realising that he was there because his focus had been instantly and completely stolen away by the human. All Skoodge had been able to do had been watching their interactions getting heated and fast, his eyes widening slightly when, in the end, his fellow soldier had taken a physical hold of Dib to be able to spit out the words directly in his face. Physical closeness wasn't something Irkens enjoyed or indulged in, unless they were forced to, and Zim had always showed nothing but despise, as most of his race, for the few individuals who contradicted that rule. And yet, there he was, perfectly _comfortable_ with having one of the beings he had defined as "filthy" and "inferior" in his personal space, not just making contact himself, but also not minding having the other touching him back. It was one of the oddest sights he had ever witnessed, and he had seen many weird things.

"I…Why do you keep asking me that?" He managed to answer in an unhappy tone, after a few, long moments of stunned silence. "I told you, I'm on license. And you said that I could stop by and visit you if I had the chance to so…I created that chance." His brows knotted together as he finally seemed to regain the use of his muscles. "You…You have really grown."

Zim relaxed almost completely at the reply, his tense stance turning back into a confident one. "That I did," he claimed, ignoring everything else that his former roommate had said. A smug grin opened widely on his face. "This ball of dirty has a much lighter gravity than Irk, as you might have noticed, and the changes in my biochemistry that…a certain _discovery_ brought allowed my superior genes to _finally_ be expressed as they should have since the start." He raised a closed fist to his face. "Height is the least that the Mighty Zim deserves for the unquestionable future successes that await ahead for me!"

Next to him Dib rolled his eyes, a mix of exasperation and amusement in his expression. "Has anyone ever told you that your overconfident self-propaganda is really lame, space boy?" He rubbed his fingers in the spot where his nemesis had hit him. "And if this _bruises_ , you're in for another water balloon. That's a promise."

The thin Invader turned to offer him another murderous look and a clicking sound, but Skoodge spoke up before he had a chance to translate it in anything close to English, involuntarily sparing the human a long stream of insults and senseless curses.

"And you formed a bond!" The sturdy Irken exclaimed, antennae perking up in excitement. "With an alien." His eyes briefly touched Dib and his enthusiasm seemed to waver for a moment, but it immediately steadied once again and he grinned. "That's great, Zim!"

Zim spluttered at that. "I didn't do anything of the sort!" He barked, his eyes widening in horror. It was a lie and everyone in the room, GIR included, had to know it, but, public knowledge or not, there was _no way_ that he would have admitted it. "We…This monkey works for…" He caught the unimpressed look that his former rival shot him. In that moment he sincerely hated whatever idiotic thought had pushed him to demand that Ms. Xander taught him about proper team work dynamics and etiquette. "The Dib works _with_ me, as my second-in-command. That's all you need to know."

He finished his speech by crossing his arms on his chest and giving a firm nod, but avoided to look directly at his former roommate, not really wanting to see the sceptical expression that was surely occupying the other Irken's face. He didn't regret having asked Dib to join him and he didn't plan on starting to do it any time soon. Despite the difficulties and the constant disagreements, working side by side with the human was as exciting and fulfilling as fighting him had been, with the added value that he got good input and someone there to correct any wrong move he might have made instead of bruises and spilled blood. And then there was that odd warmth between them, a feeling that steadied his confidence every time it started to falter, even if he would have never openly acknowledged it.

Skoodge brought a finger to his mouth, looking perplexed from the umpteenth time. His former roommate's behaviour was more puzzling than it usually was and he was tempted to point out that there was no need to be ashamed. It wasn't exactly top Irken standard, it wasn't such _at all_ , but neither he nor Zim had ever really fitted the normalcy of their race to begin with, even though the other Invader had always tried oh-so-hard. However, he had also known the thinner alien for long enough to be able to tell that any attempt at insisting on the subject would have been just wasted breath. He would have let him have it his way, at least for the moment.

"Alright, Zim. I'm sorry for assuming," he offered in a pacifying tone, even if those words couldn't have been further from what he really thought on the matter. He shot Dib another glance, still feeling a bit unsettled by his presence in general. That visit had already offered him quite a lot of unexpected surprises for him. If something was certain, it was that he wouldn't have been bored during his staying. Often confused and caught off guard definitely, but he would have had all the _entertainment_ he needed and most likely even more.

That exact thought brought him to his next inquiry and he quickly discarded his skepticism in favour of putting on a new, more hopeful grin. "Can I stay here for some time? I'm on licence as I told you and I _really_ don't want to spend it working at that snack facility. I won't interfere with your work, of course. But I could help out, if you need me too! That experience on Blorch taught me a few tips that you might find useful."

Despite his still lingering annoyance towards the human, Zim turned to shoot Dib a look, finding that his nemesis had moved to meet his eyes in turn. The sturdy Invader might have not been a threat sent by the Tallest, but, if they had allowed him to stick around, he would have surely found out that they weren't exactly planning to hand the Earth over to the Empire. Not to mention that the thin Irken's banishment might have been made official any moment now and it was hard to predict how Skoodge might have reacted, realising that he was currently the guest of an _exiled Defective_. Things might have got a bit _awkward_ , to say the least. Telling the newcomer to take his ship and go back where he had come from would have been the easiest option, that considered.

Zim's clenched and unclenched his fingers at his sides, his magenta eyes moving back on his former roommate and his gaze turning calculating. On the other hand, though, that might have been his chance to persuade the other alien to keep on being his inside agent even after he had been exiled and disgraced. It would have made things much easier for him, if he had ever been in need of information or of a channel to reach specific individuals and informers, not to mention to gain technology he couldn't procure through other means. He was sure that he could have found a way to win over Skoodge's reluctance, if he had tried hard enough. He just needed to find the right buttons to push.

"Yes, you can stay. Zim doesn't mind," he replied in the end, offering a small nod as the corner of his lip twitched upwards and his eyelids fell to cover half of his magenta orbs. It was the smartest choice, even if it might have been a _riskier_ one too. "Your assistance won't be needed, but I could use an eye witness to support my reports about this ball of dirt. You'll be able to tell everyone how dangerous this filthy planet is and that would add to my glory when I'll have conquered it!"

He raised his fists in the air and let his head fall back as a loud manic laugh erupted from his throat. Skoodge couldn't help smiling again at the sight, both because he wasn't being sent away and because apparently Zim was still the same Irken he used to know to an extent, while Dib merely rolled his eyes, even though he was unable to avoid wondering what kind of _crazy_ plan was hidden behind his nemesis's concession. The Invader had to realise how _risky_ it was for them to allow the newcomer to stay, so he had to have some sort of second aim.

Zim's cackling was short-lived, at least for his usual standards, and he quickly directed his attention to his SIR Unit, who had returned to his messy couch snacking. " _GIR_!" He barked, both his tone and his voice having sobered up. "Show Skooged around the base. The Dib and I have things to discuss."

The robot let out a displeased sound and turned to look at his master. "Do I have to? My show is about to start!" He complained, pieces of half chewed tacos spreading all around as he spoke. "I wanna see it!"

The Irken brought his hands on his hips and started to tap his foot, not even trying to hide his growing impatience. " _Now_ , GIR."

His sidekick turned to look at the human, who raised his hands as to say that he couldn't help, and then shrugged, his unhappiness already forgotten. "Okay," he chirped and bolted towards Skoodge , gripping at his arm. "Our base's super pretty! And I barf in the ducts system. You'll love it! Let's _gooooo_!"

The sturdy Invader hardly had the time to let out a gasp before both him and the SIR Unit disappeared in a hole that had opened under their feet without warning, curtesy of the Computer. GIR's overenthusiastic cackling echoed from the depths of the building, but it was quickly muffled once the opening had sealed itself.

"Okay, space boy, spit it out. Whatever you're scheming here," Dib more or less commanded as soon as he and Zim were alone. His posture was stubbornly rigid and he had crossed his arms over his chest, his face telling clearly that he wouldn't have accepted a refusal as an answer. That was hardly the right kind of attitude to deal with the alien without risking to turn the discussion into a fight, but he was still too annoyed about the other's earlier behaviour to truly care. "You're letting him stay for a reason, otherwise you'd have kicked him out already, spy of the Tallest or not."

The Irken hissed at him through his teeth, a non-verbal but still clear reminder that he didn't like to be ordered around and, especially, that the teen had no authority to do so, but then he clenched his fists and scoffed, refusing to pick up the provocation. He told himself that it was because he needed to show that he was _superior_ , but the truth was that he was aware that, due to the nature of their alliance, he had to inform Dib on how he intended to proceed regarding Skoodge's presence.

" _Of course_ you can't figure it out on your own, with that puny brain of yours," he claimed, in a condescending tone. "Your mind is far too limited to grasp my _brilliant_ schemes! But fear not, Dib-thing, Zim will enlighten you." He leant forward and smirked slightly when he saw his former rival mimicking his movements, despite the clear irritation that his words had caused him. "Listen _very_ carefully, worm child, because I will _not_ repeat myself…"

* * *

It turns out that I overestimates my ability to keep up with everything and so here I am late again with the update! At least I managed to make it in three weeks, and I didn't take over a month once again. I'm truly sorry guys, university is killing me and inspiration doesn't want to cooperate either. I can already tell you that the next chapter will come out in more or less a month. I'll be starting internships soon and I really have to get my head down on books to prepare my exams too x.x I'll try to do my best to meet the deadline this time!

Moving on, this chapter was a bit of a transition chapter...even if I _finally_ had the chance to write Skoodge again, and more properly this time! I know that some of you were curious to see how he and Dib would have interacted, and here we go with a first chance meeting! I hope you liked how I choose to play it out :D It was pretty fun to write xD Poor Skoodge is so confused. Too much at the same time.

The next chapter will be focused on Zim and Skoodge, for the most. I want to take some time to have Skoodge getting used to Earth and to have him and Zim doing some catch up...with a lil twist though u.u (not telling!)

I'll leave you guys alone now. I hope you all will have a nice day! Thank you for putting up with me despite my delays and for keeping your support flowing. It means the world to me! A virtual hug and a special thank you to my reviewers. You guys make me write even when my muse is on strike!

Questions and comments of every sort (as long as we respect each other) are welcomed and encouraged. Feedback is gold for inspiration!


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